In North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District, Democrat Larry Kissell is running against Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is a principal heir to the founder of Cannon Mills, a cotton mill empire that dominated the southern Piedmont of North Carolina for most of the Twentieth Century.
In the ad above, Kissell comes across as being cut from the mold of Piedmont North Carolina’s archetypal favorite son, Andy Griffith. It underscores the preception that Rep. Hayes is a cipher by completely ignoring him. The blue grass banjo underscores his down-home appeal but the content of what Kissell says in the voice over is spot on:
This election is about the things that family sit and talk about, whether it be jobs… education … just the future.
We’ve got to have a representative who is in touch with those concerns.
So this election is not about taking Congress back. This election is about taking our country back.
Full disclosure: I have a personal connection to N.C.’s 8th, which includes Concord, my mother’s hometown, where, not coincidentally, I spent my teenage years.
If he would have only talked about the need for the impeachment and imprisonment of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney, he would get my vote!
Here’s Congressional Quarterly’s take on the race, as of this morning: CQ update