Don’t know Jack? Post Cantor, Democrat gets new life in 7th.
In the aftermath of last month’s 7th District Republican congressional primary, as national commentators finished sifting through the rubble of Eric Cantor’s political career following his stunning loss to Dave Brat, attention eventually shifted to the man Democrats had chosen to carry their flag in November.
If Brat was considered an under-the-radar candidate, nobody knew jack about his opponent.
Now, a month after he entered the race for the 7th District’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, there’s still no easy answer to the question: Who is Jack Trammell?
That’s because the 50-year-old Kentucky native doesn’t fit into any of the tidy little boxes political operatives like to use to define their candidates.
Trammell is an associate professor of sociology at Randolph-Macon College, but he’s hardly a stuffy academic. Instead, he advocates for the rights of the disabled in higher education.
He’s a family man – he and wife Audrie have a blended family of seven children – who attends church regularly. He’s also a musician who has played in multiple rock bands.
He’s a prodigious writer who is as comfortable working in the romantic fiction genre as he is chronicling Richmond’s role in the slave trade.
And while he lives on a farm in Louisa County, Trammell is nobody’s rube.
“Voters want an ‘average guy’ who they can relate to, but they also expect their candidate to be sophisticated enough to deal with what they’ll have to do in Washington,” he said last week after walking in Brandermill’s annual Independence Day parade.
What Trammell must do over the next four months is convince 51 percent of the voters in the 7th District to send a Democrat to Congress.
http://www.chesterfieldobserver.com/news/2014-07-09/News/Dont_know_Jack_Post_Cantor_Democrat_gets_new_life_.html