You’ve spent some time in this district. So tell me about it. You say it’s anachronistic. What do you mean?
It’s very rural. It’s very white. It’s poor. Its two biggest cities each have fewer than 40,000 people. Fairly recently, I think 6,000 people signed a petition to preserve a statue of a Klan member.
Not a Confederate soldier. A Klan member?
Yeah, exactly. It has a history of electing fringe candidates. There was the election of a guy who was described to me as a paranoid urologist who represented the district back in the 1980s. Obviously, the district loves Trump, and Democrats have really made somewhat understandably half-hearted efforts at even running candidates.
There’s been six contests there since the district was drawn in 2010. I think they’ve only fielded a candidate in three of those, and when they’ve done that, they’ve had almost laughable candidates step up to the task, one of whom was a doctor with an expired medical license who was also a well-known nudist. And during a DUI stop that took place during the last weeks of the campaign, he told the arresting officer that he hated the county and he prayed for God to curse it.
It’s just so hard to get anyone to step up to the plate to run against Republicans here and those who do are a little nuts.
Democrats and Republicans alike are lining up to try to unseat the Republican firebrand, but it won’t be easy.
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