Representation of local interests is a fundamental condition for a well-functioning democracy. Under which conditions are legislators representing minority interests? In this paper, I use parliamentary speech from Norway together with novel data on politicians' backgrounds, travels and party financing to study how local economic hardship affects parliamentary behavior. I find that MPs representing districts with high economic pressure, proxied by local unemployment, tend to deliver significantly fewer speeches in parliament. This reduced speech delivery cannot be explained by increased traveling to home districts or parliamentary absenteeism. Instead, I demonstrate that the party limits floor access once local unemployment is high, because MPs representing these districts tend to deviate more from the party line in speeches. Taken together, my results indicate that local interests are suppressed in times of distress, to avoid elevated incentives to deviate from the party line from compromising the party brand.