SMALL COLLEGE-BIG POLITICS

 Readership on weekends is traditionally low and this was Father’s day weekend. Not as big a deal as mother’s day and for years when I was a delegate to the AMA meetings; the summer meeting was always on Father’s day in Chicago.

That is why I am posting this Monday am; the agenda for tonight’s meeting has been beaten to death this past week.

Last week’s big election news was the upset victory in Virginia’s 

Republican 7th Congressional district primary of incumbent Eric Cantor by Tea Partyer David Brat who received 55.5% of the 65000 ballots cast.

That was a major and unexpected defeat of a powerful centralist Republican in Congress by a candidate that was given no chance by all the pundits and polls. I am not going into the whys and whats of this unexpected result; but focus on the human interest in this election and the upcoming election.

David Brat is professor of economics at Randolph Macon College a small 1700 student body coed Methodist College in Ashland Virginia.

Ashland is about 20 miles north of Richmond. What used to be the  RFP ( Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac) RR now the Amtrak and CSX tracks run at ground level through the city; along one of the main streets and adjacent to the college.

My grandson Reid and his wife Amber are graduates of Randolph Macon, so I am well acquainted with the college. It is a great small high quality  college suitable for those who would not like or function well in the big university community.  

Randolph-Macon will now be the focus of national attention, not because of Brat’s victory but because his Democrat opponent, John Trammell is Professor of Sociology at Randolph Macon

Small school, small community there has to be close contact and relationship between the two. It may not be social but both play on the faculty basketball team that has an annual game against the varsity; something that would not happen in the big university venue.  Otherwise they have little in common.##

Both have written books; Trammell has focused on history and fiction including a romance novel ‘Sarah’s Last Secret”. Since the election Politico has excerpted a few steamy sentences for the far Right.

Brat@@ who has described himself as a “Calvinist”, has had a religious bent to his writings on economics. He is frequently quoting from a 2011 article “God and Advanced Mammon-Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism” in which he questions whether Christianity can be reconciled with government programs.**

Both have remarked that they have a congenial relationship although differ on politics^^.

Note it pays to read the Times.

**source-NY Times 6/13/14: some excerpts;

##David Brat, the economics professor and Republican giant killer who knocked off Representative Eric Cantor, and Jack Trammell, the sociologist and utter political novice who got the Democratic nomination because hardly anyone wanted it, play occasionally on a faculty team against students at Randolph-Macon College here in Ashland.

Mr. Brat is known for his motor mouth and for using his weight to play inside. Mr. Trammell, taller and leaner, relies on quickness. -_- The college community is as taken as the national news media with the story line of the two dueling professors who a week ago were obscure, rumpled academics embarking on doomed political excursions that almost no one outside their families, pets and livestock seemed to be paying attention to.

“It means a whole lot of attention on our campus,” said Robert R. Lindgren, the president, recalling that the liberal arts college’s biggest brush with fame previously was when it admitted a 10-year-old freshman in the 1990s.

@@Mr. Brat has an unpredictable streak. He takes a generally free-market, libertarian stance, but economists of that stripe generally favor relaxed immigration, while Mr. Brat not only opposes it, but used the issue to great effect against Mr. Cantor.

^^Mr. Trammell --said that he was aware of Mr. Brat’s deeply conservative views, but that they never caused disagreements between them. “Around here, we all get to know each other pretty well,” he said. “We talk a lot about issues in the world and in education and even delve into politics. In Dave’s case, no more than anyone else.”