VP candidates to debate in Virginia town read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/1134-vp-candidates-to-debate-in-virginia-town

Jay Fortner, a truck driver who hauls construction material around Virginia, is putting his faith in Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to revive rural America, including the small town of Farmville where he lives.

That is especially true in Virginia, a state once reliably Republican but where Clinton now leads in opinion polls.

Farmville, a town of 8,000 nestled in the heart of central Virginia, will get a rare spell in the limelight on Tuesday night when U.S. vice presidential candidates Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine face off at Longwood University in their only debate of the general election campaign.

Farmville and hundreds of other small towns and rural counties that dot America's midsection could prove crucial in the close Nov. 8 presidential race between Trump, a New York businessman, and Democrat Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state and first lady.

"We used to have nice jobs, nice factories, but they went to Mexico and other places where it was cheaper for the products to be made,” Fortner, 59, said on a recent afternoon while loading shopping bags into his car at the local Wal-Mart.

Trump, who needs to rack up big vote totals in small-town America, has bet that his vow to rip up international trade deals and bring back jobs will resonate in places where the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas has left deep economic scars.

The area surrounding Farmville has seen paper and furniture plants closed. Farmville lost a shoe manufacturing facility decades ago and former workers still hold an annual reunion.

Clinton is not expected to win the rural vote, but she must keep Trump from outperforming her by large numbers.

Several states that Clinton hopes to win have large rural populations, but have become more urban and liberal in recent years.

In Virginia and Georgia, 25 percent of the state's residents live in rural areas. In North Carolina, 34 percent of residents live in rural communities.