Hunting Bubba

...He nearly flips us on the steep embankment of the first turn, while feathering us out of the high groove on the second...

...A few weeks later, back home in New England, at Dartmouth, Kerry told an audience, "Everybody always makes the mistake of looking south," pointing out that Al Gore nearly became president without winning one southern state...

...One of Mudcat's myriad cris de coeur (besides the lament that Democrats "have no testosterone" and are unable to "get through the culture" of the South) is that his party can't count...

...he asks, since I had earlier promised to...

...Murphy adds that they "need to win a few more races before I (or Graham or Edwards) grant any big genius kudos...

...Mudcat prefers to call them "white males" or just "Bubbas," not only because it annoys the elites in his own party, but because NASCAR fandom itself is grossly misunderstood...

...My African-American friends want to win as much as I do...

...A couple of years earlier, Mudcat and his mentor, Steve Jarding, had become a hot ticket: They'd masterminded Mark Warner's ride to the governor's mansion in Virginia by figuring out how he could pick off the rural vote, a feat Democrats hadn't accomplished in the state in nearly a generation...

...Yeah," amens Bobby, and "what's the bulls— with the ban on Sunday hunting...

...Bubba scouts...

...Mudcat's house smacks up against the Blue Ridge foothills, with Back Creek snaking through a front lawn that is littered with deer feed and bow-hunting buck targets on which he scores lung shots, yawning, from 50 yards away...

...A gutfighter even then, Jarding says, "I was pissed...

...Mudcat's bedspread is a large Confederate flag, which he pedantically insists is the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia...

...Well then tell him Happy Hanukkah from Mudcat," he responds...

...His friend is Bobby the Eye Doctor...

...When I ask Jarding why Democrats should necessarily concentrate on a demographic that's been hostile to them, since there's only a finite pie and limited resources, he grows increasingly animated: "I'd say let Republicans make that argument...

...I've got the monkey off my back," Cravin says, after going 27 straight mornings without pulling the trigger...

...Tell him I can make a run if he needs some pint bottles to give to his friends at Christmas...

...Then he turns things serious: "It's one of the most frustrating things for me in my life...

...It's Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and it's Alabama in the middle...

...It won't win you a political race, but it can get you a hearing with voters who would otherwise be indifferent...

...He DJs furiously, as he will throughout my visit, both at home and in the car...

...They're gone...

...For a candidate who does this, it's just one weapon in his arsenal, he says...

...Mudcat settles in with his iced tea, and goes to work on Bobby's head...

...He is the youngest of eight children, whose father died when he was four months old...

...That said, I like Mudcat, and they do understand how to win governor's races in the South...

...Jarding says it's high time Democrats stopped worrying about appeasing the base, which isn't big enough to win national elections, and started making inroads into the approximately 35 percent of the country—the South— that they're ceding, by breaking it down into component pools...

...It sounds like you're saying, 'You're an idiot.' No, Democrats, you're the idiots...

...Afterwards, he gave up booze, and remastered the realestate market...

...He drills him over the Contract With America, not because Mudcat disagrees with it, but because he says power-drunk, decadent Republicans have largely forsaken their principles and quit acting like Republicans...

...It has the ring of an election-year neologism (Security Moms, Office Park Dads, Duplicate Bridge Club Aunts) hatched by political consultants eager to keep up their chat-show bookings by conning producers into thinking they've figured out a new wrinkle...

...The only things Whitey says you need at his track are a "seatbelt, a helmet, and no brains—nobody's been disqualified for the latter yet...

...I take five successive gulps, and am amazed by its smooth, fruity finish...

...After I check into the Hotel Roanoke, Mudcat picks me up in his SUV, wearing the usual: shorts, MotorCraft "Wood Brothers" ballcap, and a slack, all-purpose smile that could equally be saying "Welcome to Roanoke...

...He also blares the Bluegrass Brothers' version of "He Will Set Your Fields On Fire...

...Sorry," he says, "didn't mean to Three-Stooges you...

...As I V barrel down I-81 in Virginia's Blue Ridge country, Dave "Mudcat" Saunders is growling on the other end of the line...

...But as he was about to pull the trigger, he stopped and prayed, saying, "God, if you're there, help me...

...Working at a paper in Newport News, Mudcat was briefly assigned to the Baltimore Colts, and relished all the free Schaefer's beer and crabcakes in the press box...

...He decided to blow his brains out on Sinking Creek Mountain...

...It wasn't the demographic they were going for...

...At one campaign stop, Kerry forsook his classical guitar to break into some Johnny Cash...

...who he simply calls "Two") are his compadres...

...You're a finite pie...

...Jarding is a purer partisan than Mudcat...

...Unemployment rates are up...

...Politics is about addition, that's all it is...

...For Graham, Mudcat tapped his contacts in the worlds of stock car racing, bluegrass, and Bubba-land generally, to turn out Dr...

...You're the spirit of Bubba, son...

...Buck," he declares...

...he asks...

...I hate photos...

...Rummaging through his freezer, past the bear slabs and deer burgers, rainbow trout and frog-legs (much of which he will send home with me in a Styrofoam cooler), he pulls out a mason jar of purple stuff, a damson plum bobbing in it like a cork...

...And the president is a Republican—who else do I blame...

...Republicans are the big sonsofbitches...

...The two were made for each other, and have been a team since...

...In between croaking the chorus (If you don't from sin retire / He will set your fields on fire), he tells me about fulfilling his duties as Bubba Coordinator for various candidates...

...Our best excursion, however, is a predawn turkey hunt on Bent Mountain...

...Why the f— do we want to fully fund parks we can't hunt...

...Jarding says 25 years after the Reagan Democrat phenomenon, "they said they hadn't gotten a damn thing for that vote...

...The buck's is bitter, the doe's sweeter because of her mammary glands...

...Or take John Kerry, he says, a prototypical modern Democrat, who when it comes to the South alternates between not trying at all and looking like he's trying too hard...

...He jokes that I'll have him wearing a coonskin cap by the time I write the piece...

...She already swung enough in upstate New York to become senator...

...Stuck on a chaser pontoon on the Mississippi River for a fishing photo-op, we watched Graham, on the lead boat, do what he did best throughout the campaign: aimlessly drift...

...Scoff if you will, but in some pockets of rural Virginia, this lineup is tantamount to producing the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost...

...But why couldn't she...

...Jarding is as reclusive as Mudcat is media-friendly...

...Bobby just wanted to meet him, because Mudcat is something of a legendary hunter in the area...

...Antlers protrude on every side, and turkey beards and feet, used to make hat-bands, junk up his refrigerator...

...When Cravin tells Bobby I'm profiling Mudcat, Bobby asks if I work for a hunting magazine...

...That's bear," he says, pointing to a pile that looks like a Wendy's double-cheeseburger without the cheese...

...Foxes in the Henhouse is due to be released next spring...

...During interviews, conversation halts and important points are lost as he leans over and says, "Listen to this, Brotha," then strives with all his might to hit the high, lonesome notes...

...Because since the beginning of time, the big sonofabitch has kicked the little sonofabitch's ass," he says...

...What is Pennsylvania...

...But he wants it made absolutely clear that his celebration of heritage doesn't mean he's some racist—a common misconception, he says, which is why his fellow Democrats reacted to Dean as though he'd advocated electrocuting puppies...

...But I can't get northeastern Democrats to believe they can get through the culture of the South...

...Ralph Stanley, Daytona champ Ward Burton, and Ben "Cooter" Jones from The Dukes of Hazzard for a single event...

...He takes me to one of his many hunt clubs in the mountains, to pull rainbow trout out of a stocked pond...

...Mudcat asks rhetorically...

...Even Cravin, who's gone completely mellow in his vodka-tonic stupor, but who periodically interrupts with outbursts in which he refers to himself in the third person, interjects, "Cravin Moorehead says that don't make any sense...

...He and his real-estate partner, a regional publishing magnate named Richard Wells, are partly responsible for revitalizing downtown Roanoke...

...He gives Louisiana as an example: Bush won the state last year by 283,413 votes...

...And after all, he says, Bubbas aren't just southerners...

...The Democrats are a bunch of dumb-asses, is what they are...

...It's an appropriate abode for a guy who's gotten so much mileage out of being a specialist in NASCAR Dads, though the term itself elicits an eruption of expletives...

...And it's bool-sheet that He's a Democrat—they'll tell you to doomsday about Him healing the sick and clothing the nekkid, as if that's proof...

...They're throwing 3.2 percent more acid rain in our streams," he emphasizes...

...Democrats are insane...

...Wouldn't Bubba rather hit her with rotten fruit than see her name on a stock car...

...Instead, he guns it right onto the track proper, opening up his brand new Jeep Cherokee...

...I don't see anything insane about winning...

...I'm impressed by his breadth of knowledge...

...or "What the hell are you looking at...

...I started thinking things might be all right...

...After college at Virginia Tech, he became a local sportswriter...

...Bobby, who earlier said he didn't want to talk politics, by now is nodding furiously...

...When Howard Dean stepped in it, during the run-up to primary season 2004, by suggesting that his party needed to appeal to guys who have Confederate-flag decals on their pickup trucks, Mudcat was his target demographic...

...After a few captive hours under Mudcat's spell, listening to him spin how Graham could take the South, how he was knowledgeable enough to discuss "the gestation period of the Antarctic kiwi," how he could make the blind see and the lame walk, even the most hard-bitten among us thought Graham would last longer than another month and a half, which is actually all he had left...

...Boasting of his hunter's skill at bird calls, he says he can summon "a turkey egg up a hill...

...Now did you see Bush concede any state...

...He voted for Reagan in 1980, though he now claims, "I was drunk...

...As we encounter some, I challenge him to chow down...

...Navy has also done, as a way to start cracking the culture—he says they were rebuffed...

...His house sits near the Franklin County line, which is the moonshine capital of the world...

...And he's known to scout the terrain months before the season opens...

...The way Mudcat sees it, Kerry telegraphed contempt for southerners, and in one fell swoop shot the bird to one-fourth of the country...

...While Jarding is more of a traditional Democrat than Mudcat, he's just as peevish when it comes to recent Democratic behavior toward rural and southern voters: "If you say to them, 'You're voting against your own economic interest,' is that true...

...Bubba doesn't need to know you're one of him, he just needs to know you appreciate him...

...I accede...

...You can get them back.' I said, 'How do I get them back?' He said, 'That's your job, I'm just telling you they're out there.'" Jarding met Mudcat, launched their rural offensive, and the rest is election history...

...He runs outside, then comes back in, flinging an empty box of Raisinets in my lap...

...He says, "Mudcat knows his s...

...Mudcat says that on the trail once, Kerry took him aside and told him that after the nomination was locked up, the campaign was headed south and Mudcat could "be there for the ride...

...In the lockerroom one day, Mudcat noticed Johnny Unitas's shower habits and asked him why he dried his nether regions before his head...

...I also remember imagining that Mudcat would be even livelier without the encumbrance of a dead-weight candidate...

...It is the rare utterance that goes by without some similar indelicacy...

...In fact, he regularly pronounces against the racists who have tarnished his culture...

...Since his own great-grandfather got his shoulder blown out by a yankee at Seven Pines, Mudcat is a proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans...

...Instead of going to the games as instructed by his editor, however, he'd often listen to the play-by-play on the radio at the Coffee Pot, a raucous roadhouse that featured the likes of Root Boy Slim, who used to vomit on stage after playing "Boogie Til You Puke...

...It's part of the reason he quit attending...

...The book itself, as Mudcat describes it, will "take a wire brush to Republicans" for peeling off traditional Democrats in southern and rural areas under false pretenses, first through Nixon's race-tinged Southern Strategy, then by suckering Reagan Democrats after preaching the gospel of limited government and heartland values while selling their jobs out to big business and socking the country with runaway deficits...

...screams Mudcat...

...asks Mudcat...

...The big-screen in his living room features a constant loop of NASCAR races and hunting shows...

...A burly 47-year-old who wears a "Deny Everything" ball-cap, Jarding grew up in small towns across South Dakota, and like Mudcat is an avid hunter...

...Mudcat has made a nice chunk as a local real-estate developer (politics largely being a hobbyhorse...

...They're killin' our f—in' brook trout...

...Jarding insisted there were legions of untapped rural persuadables, and "Gersh lit up like a lamp," says Jarding...

...He plays his preselected "funeral song," Junior Sisk's version of "Purple Robe" (which Junior has already agreed to show up and sing, assuming Mudcat goes first...

...Over the next few days, Mudcat offers a crash course on "The Culture...

...The data suggested formerly Democratic rural voters were voting Republican out of habit, and largely on cultural issues, but they weren't necessarily satisfied customers...

...Like s—," he says...

...After chewing them thoughtfully, he renders a verdict...

...We adjourn to the porch, and talk hunting for what seems like several hours, while Mudcat encourages the boys to finish off the damson, "cause after this story comes out, I can't have this s— in the house...

...Using Mudcat math, that means the Dems would have to turn around 142,000 votes of the two million cast (pool one), while also courting the one million eligible voters who didn't vote (pool two...

...It's a stink-bomb lobbed at fellow Democrats—or as Mudcat often calls them, "f—in' Democrats," the northeastern liberals who he feels have contempt for his culture, and whom he dislikes more than he dislikes Republicans...

...And that's coyote, you can tell because of the hair in it...

...I can take you down the road to Damascus in about four hours," he tells the boys...

...No," he says impatiently, "I get two...

...I can't make you vote for a Democrat," Mudcat continues, "But I can make you look at one...

...He's carrying heavy gear and I just a notebook, yet he seems to walk twice as fast as I can on the five-mile trek over hill and hollow...

...Mudcat guards the Foxes lyrics as if they were his daughter's chastity (though he's pretty generous in sharing his other verse via email, including a favorite break-up poem he sent a girl, elegantly titled "F— you": I'm glad that you treated me rotten / I'm glad that you made me cry / Cause it's much, much easier to say 'F— you' / Than it is to say 'Good-bye...

...He smokes like a Rustbelt factory...

...They say Republicans are insane, but they win...

...Hitting an array of other cultural issues—mostly Democratic planks formulated in Bubba English—Mudcat's about ready to draw the net...

...Mudcat moves through the brush like a shadow, while branches whack me in the face as I lag...

...He brings up Sportsmen for Kerry as an example, saying that the group's number one initiative was fully funding national parks...

...He said, 'Not only do I believe it, I'll show you.'" Gersh told Jarding that all of his research indicated that there were more persuadable voters in rural areas than in the suburbs...

...Forty percent of the followers of stock car racing are women, and only 38 percent live in the South (a new track is opening in Staten Island...

...These voters helped George W. Bush clean-sweep the South twice—the first time against Al Gore, a southern white Protestant...

...But his house is a modest converted migrant worker's shack with low ceilings and heart-pine floors...

...By contrast, John Kennedy, a northeastern Catholic, garnered six...

...By now, Mudcat is feeding off his audience...

...It is probably the first pox-on-both-parties manifesto to come with a companion CD...

...He became one of the region's top salesmen, but when the market took a downturn in the early '80s, he nearly went bankrupt in every way, bottoming out with alcoholism and losing his family...

...He screws the top back on, then hands me the jar...

...No it doesn't," he says...

...When Jarding told him he was working Warner, Gersh told Jarding that was too bad, because Warner couldn't win with just Virginia's traditional Democratic base...

...Mudcat tells Bobby he may be a Democrat, but he's a fiscal conservative who believes in the sanctity of the Constitution and has a poor opinion of the Patriot Act...

...No chance," I tell him, "I thought you were kidding...

...We need to keep our culture," says Mudcat...

...One, I reply...

...I asked him, 'Why did they kill Kennedy and not Humphrey?'" After a series of local and state Democratic party political jobs, he spent much of the '90s attached to former Senator Bob Kerrey...

...He looked up and saw the bluest sky he'd ever seen...

...I imagined right...

...C'mon, Paul," says Bobby, "Bring it...

...He thinks the pulpit is no place for politics, and vice versa...

...When working with Mark Warner, he actually enlisted the Bluegrass Brothers to record Warner's campaign song...

...It's a Carville-lite act with a NASCAR twist, aimed mostly at neurotic urban liberal reporters who love the southern fried two-fisted-damn-Democrat'n'proud-of-it noble savage shtick...

...The downtime allows me to get his biographical particulars...

...They are both deep into vodka tonics, which they've brought with them in plastic cups...

...I can make you believe I ate deer s...

...This is followed by a 200-proof mule-kick to the head, like drinking two double bourbons through a straw, fast...

...And you've got the economic issues where you can go get 'em, but you've got to get through the culture and through to their values...

...Gersh said, 'They're voting Republican, but they're not Republican...

...As we come off the mountain, we see a fresh, gleaming pile of deer droppings...

...But Mudcat too had to suffer the indignities of a tanking campaign...

...His dashboard features a pack of Winstons, his round-the-clock cigarette, as well as unfiltered Camels, which he uses to mainline nicotine when some restaurant or other nanny-state nuisance is about to make him go without...

...As I white-knuckle it, he lets out a rebel yell: "I'll show you a NASCAR Dad, Brotha...

...While the "foxes" in their tale are Republicans, Democratic leaders aren't so much hens as they are "possums—the ones who roll over and play dead...

...Subsequently, the two formalized their partnership and hung out a shingle, calling the firm "Rural Renaissance...

...I ask what they were going for...

...It's time to start looking at things differently, just as he wants me to, when he abruptly pops out of his chair, saying, "I almost forgot your keepsake...

...They call the kids "The Dukes of Harvard" with gleeful irony, since Harvard is the very bastion of northeastern elitism they are decrying...

...The winner of numerous "big-buck" contests, Mudcat likes to spend every day of deer season up on the mountain, one of the reasons he says he honestly doesn't care if he ever touches another campaign...

...By the time we all take the fraternal leak in Mudcat's yard, Bobby the Eye Doctor, the former die-hard Republican, is ready to look, assuring Mudcat, "You know what...

...He's the hammer, I'm just a nail...

...I didn't know what a deed of trust was, but I knew it was 'd' on the multiple choice...

...Just try to conceive of anyone reading the political musings of John Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, let alone paying for the privilege...

...calls at Razorback football games when she was first lady of Arkansas probably won't cut much ice...

...He explained away Graham's lack of success as a fisherman by highlighting the candidate's unique catch-and-release system: "He releases them before he catches them...

...One of Mudcat's neighbors has come over with a friend who wants to meet him...

...The advantages of slapping a candidate's name on a car, silly as it seems to some, are obvious, Mudcat says...

...But it sounds belittling...

...Once a ferocious alcoholic, Mudcat hasn't had a drink in 22 years...

...This, on top of getting Jon Wood of the Wood Brothers racing dynasty to drive a "Mark Warner" emblazoned Ford F-150 in NASCAR's Craftsman truck series...

...Just like Cravin sitting over there...

...BY MATT LABASH Roanoke, Virginia "You're slower than cream rising on s—.Haul ass down here so we can get this piece knocked out, Brotha...

...After serial unemployment, and after developing an increasing problem with alcohol that resulted in lots of barfights (he says his career record is 0-67), he got into the real-estate game after cheating on the exam by buying old tests...

...That morning on the Mississippi, Graham hands had imported Mudcat to give good quote, attempting to distract us from the candidate's inadequacies...

...These kids haven't been ruined yet," says Mudcat...

...But to me, hearing birds tweeting and seeing blue sky, it was a miracle...

...How morally right is it for our Democratic nominee for president to tell 60 million people, 'You don't matter to me...

...When querulous reporters tried to kick his man's slats in, he didn't get nervous or defensive...

...In his study, where Mudcat's knocking out his section of the book (Jarding's doing most of the heavy lifting), nine monster buck heads, mounted but not hung, sit on the floor in a semicircle around his computer stand, as if they were trying to spy a glance at what their liquidator is writing...

...His mom was a Nixon Republican, but steadily grew more liberal, resenting the way Republicans soured voters against their government when, after all, it was the government that gave her a Social Security check to help make ends meet, and put all eight of her children through college when she had no money to send them...

...hotel room had mistakenly been given away the night before, so he'd been forced to sleep at a truck stop, where he'd taken a $3 shower...

...Twice-divorced with two daughters who don't live with him, he inhabits a monument to southern bachelorhood and legal violence...

...He keeps a loaded shotgun set against a wall in his dining room, not only to "blast varmints," but also to warn any racists who've heard his taunts and want to stop by for an unfriendly debate...

...G-O-I, God's Only Party—that's bool-sheet...

...He picks a few pellets up, and pops them in his mouth...

...Because I just took one away from Republicans...

...Our infrastructure is falling apart, we don't have any jobs here, we can't make a living.' According to Gersh's research, they were pissed off...

...He's already working out the title song for the CD with bluegrass virtuoso Ronnie Bowman, who's cowritten, along with Music Row Democrats cofounder Don Cook, Brooks & Dunn's current chart-topping single...

...I ask if he has anything stronger, and he looks at me like I'm in for it now...

...After hitting the one million or so hunters and sportsmen (pool three), the one quarter of the rural voters living below the poverty line (pool four), and active and retired military personnel (pool five), tailoring a pitch to each, all of a sudden winning 142,000 new votes seems rather manageable...

...These came from the very same voters who'd given Democrats spankings for years, and who just 12 months before had rejected Democrat Chuck Robb against Republican George Allen for the Senate by roughly the same margin...

...His philosophy: "Let it burn...

...With Mudcat overseeing the pyrotechnics and Jarding rolling out Warner's pro-rural policy initiatives, to give his message both substance and street-cred, the pair pulled off a victory all the more eye-popping in that their candidate was far from the best on paper to execute the Bubba strategy...

...He's too big to get involved in partisan politics...

...When we pull up to the track, Mud-cat doesn't stop in the parking lot, or even drive over to the infield...

...But the screed is not only a prescription for how to bring those Democrats home on issues such as gays and guns...

...Mudcat commands me to "hit some of this...

...What he actually said was "f—ing church...

...It's branding, Brotha, just like Downy and Budweiser...

...Give some of this to Bill Kristol," he says, "I like him...

...You've given them nothing, and while you're doing that, suicide rates are up...

...A moralist at heart, he won't shoot actual deer in his own yard...

...They are celebrating Cravin's first kill of turkey season, which ends in only two days...

...Which is not to say the lifelong Baptist isn't big on Jesus...

...Hell no...

...I ask, now in medical shock...

...I'm not going to call him phony," says Mudcat, "But I am going to say he sprayed down my leg and told me it was raining...

...When he and Jarding approached the Democratic National Committee about sponsoring a NASCAR truck decked out with fire-snorting donkey nostrils—as they'd done successfully with Warner, and as everyone from the NRA to the U.S...

...If I go get a white male," he asks, "how many votes do I get...

...Even Republicans have to give the pair their due, sort of...

...Sure, Bobby's a good Baptist who thinks gays have no right to get married, while Mudcat thinks it's a states-rights issue, and takes a more laissez faire attitude toward homosexuals, as long as he's not the object of their attentions...

...Mudcat had written the words in the shower, setting them to the music of "Dooley," which was originally sung by the Dillards of The Andy Griffith Show...

...And I happen to like the little sonsofbitches...

...If a Democrat "would give you a reason to vote for him, you'd vote for him," promises Mudcat...

...He tells them that inside every rural Republican is a Democrat trying to get out...

...Go to rural America and say, 'You're a finite pie, so screw you...

...He says that to keep their rural children home, they need to give them a reason to stay, through investment and better education...

...Why not save some time and just become one...

...While Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, speculates that Mudcat and Jarding will "probably be ignored" by their party, he calls their line "one-third true, two-thirds hokum...

...He don't give a damn about partisan politics...

...Instead, he threatened to "Bobby Knight y'all's ass...

...But despite his best efforts using a wooden Lynch Box, then a turkey diaphragm, a little rubber piece that he pops into his mouth (and which he says can also be used for contraception with "wild hillbilly women"), the turkeys seem to have gone into hiding...

...But they don't know how to shoot at Bubba...

...He has no idea of Mudcat's political involvements...

...I got sick of preachers telling me how great Reagan was...

...Stuart and Stonewall Jackson who "did most of the ass-kicking...

...Rednecks drink beer and watch their big-screens," says Mudcat...

...Neither is Mudcat and Jarding's feel for southern white males, particularly rural ones, who used to be Democrats' most reliable constituency and now can't leave the party fast enough...

...I didn't see any 75-story Jesus...

...Not fresh enough to tell," he says...

...It's not difficult," he says, giving me a primer on Mudcat math...

...Back then, I was one of a group of short-straw reporters assigned to cover Bob Graham's "family vacation," a Win-nebago caravan across Iowa that, in a lucky break for the Graham grandchildren, coincided with presidential campaign season...

...When I ask him to provide a photo because I've been unable to find one of him, he says, "Good...

...Well they write the goddamned budget...

...A bobcat that met its end by Mudcat's hand serves as a valance over his living-room window...

...After a brief stint with John Edwards, whose campaign they fled over philosophical differences with other staffers, the pair signed on with Graham, who himself had entered the race so late that his poll numbers never stopped resembling those of Dennis Kucinich...

...When it became clear Kerrey wouldn't run for president in 2000, Jarding took over Warner's campaign, and, as was his custom, checked in with Mark Gersh, an electoral numbers whiz at the National Committee for an Effective Congress...

...Mudcat, 56, is a bluegrass fiend who hopes to get many of his friends in the music world to contribute to the disc...

...I love W. He's the man...

...They're voting on something out there, because the other side gave them something to vote on...

...Many of Mudcat's hunting buddies are black, and he points out that he hasn't shot any of them...

...NASCAR fans are fiercely loyal, and they are three times more likely than the average consumer to buy products advertised on their favorite driver's car...

...We later found out he ruined his tires, but Whitey called to say we made the house record book for logging the fastest lap done by a late model SUV "without us having to empty out your britches...

...They're my people...

...As we drive off, he is already under the full sway of the religious tunes blaring from his stereo...

...He calls his sobriety "a gift from God...

...But he mocks my baby sip, saying, "Take a damn drink of likker, Boy...

...Everyone around here, a friend of his later tells me, has "either made it once, hauled it twice, or drank it a lot...

...The decor is Davy Crockett as told by Ted Nugent...

...But he didn't exactly cover himself in glory...

...Even his cat, named Kitty, is a stone-cold killer, preying on everything from rabbits to bats, and regularly leaving gut-piles on Mudcat's porch...

...There you go," he says, approvingly...

...My vocabulary is less than 200 words," he says by way of apology, asking at one point, as a favor to his aged mother, that I not quote him saying he no longer goes to "goddamn church...

...I ask him if she could make inroads with the Bubbas, since her "Sooey...

...I wasn't like Oral Roberts...

...Amateurs are encouraged to push their junkers to the limit, though Whitey gets mad when they hit the wall and catch fire...

...I'd shoot one of them, and not feel a thing," he says...

...But much as he did during the Warner campaign, when he and Jarding neutralized the NRA by forming their own pro-gun sportsmen's committees, Mudcat sings the glories of gun rights, and tells Bobby that as a sportsman he should be grievously offended that Bush relaxed standards on coal-fired generators...

...He rigged his rifle to make it look like a hunting accident, which would allow his relatives to collect some life insurance...

...He's Jewish," I say...

...So instead we're left identifying animal droppings...

...Mudcat (a childhood nickname earned by tireless bottom-fishing of the Roanoke River) was serving as Graham's "Bubba Coordinator...

...The rest of the Confederacy appropriated it, he says, because it was Virginians like J.E.B...

...He wheels me over to Franklin County's Callaway USA, a legendary outlaw racetrack run by his good friend Whitey Taylor...

...Jarding, who nearly entered the priesthood before casting his lot in politics, says, "It's a moral argument...

...Wages are down—it's a terrible mess in rural America...

...Bluegrass royalty like the Del McCoury clan and Ralph Stanley Jr...

...Don't act like they don't exist...

...Furthermore, he tells Bobby that "there ain't 50 cents difference in you and I politically...

...Bobby takes strong issue, saying you can't blame Republicans for the deficit, since the economy is partly responsible...

...Not until later when I'm transcribing my tapes, and sound out the name real slow, do I realize I've been had...

...If you pop a few in your mouth, you can tell if it's a buck or a doe that you're tracking...

...Unlike most political types, particularly of the Democratic persuasion, he is unabashed about his faith, to the point that he calls it "blasphemy" to employ it for political ends...

...It is where Steve Jarding lives when not teaching up at Harvard's Kennedy School, a place that has provided the two with a pool of eager researchers for their book...

...He's a political genius," Mudcat says of his partner...

...It was probably just as well...

...They're voting on their values...

...Fat women from New England," he snaps...

...Whitey is a promotions genius who features attractions from schoolbus races to tracks hosed down with water on final laps for a little slip'n'slide...

...His fire extinguishers cost more than many of the cars...

...I decided to renew the acquaintance upon reading that he and Jarding had just signed with Simon & Schuster to do a book for mid-six-figures, not bad for two campaign strategists whose candidate had finished way out of the money...

...Jesus don't give endorsements," Mudcat thunders...

...Considering that two southern governors are the only Democrats who've won the presidency in the last 35 years, it's nothing to sneeze at...

...His Matt Labash senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...But he got itchy for some new action around 2001...

...He explains that deer droppings are vital to the expert hunter...

...Back in Mudcat's Roanoke living room, the hour is late, and the political handicapping is underway...

...He wasn't invited back...

...Time after time, Mudcat says, he butts up against the intellectual condescension of the northeastern ruling elite in his party, who dismiss a counteroffensive out of hand...

...In South Dakota, he was George McGovern's paper boy, and his first political gig came at 10 years old, when he volunteered for Bobby Kennedy...

...By now, it should be clear that Mudcat has a foul-language problem...

...You're not a redneck," says Mudcat...

...says Mudcat...

...I heard birds singing and s—," he says...

...I take a polite swallow and hand it back...

...Democrats miss that point, and if they get that point, they're going to win a helluva lot of races...

...Our revelry is interrupted by a rap at the door...

...But that would only be a slight exaggeration...

...All 21 percent of the country of you, all 60 million of you...

...I vote for the person, not the party...

...After hearing about my magazine, Bobby identifies himself as a "f—in' diehard Republican...

...Mudcat had tired of dealing with "the egos of big men in short pants," and was ready for a change...

...He told us that he suspected the Potomac River was the holiest in the world, since "you can take the dumbest sonofabitch and put him on the other side of that river and all of a sudden it becomes Good Will Hunting...

...It's part of the show, man...

...Seeing I'm a reporter, the neighbor introduces himself as Cravin Moorehead, a name I use all evening...

...Their maneuvers (Mudcat describes himself as a sergeant to Jarding's general) helped Warner—a Connecticut-raised, Harvard Law-educated telecom millionaire— get over with southwestern Virginia voters, to the tune of picking up 101,000 votes...

...You gonna eat some...

...It is the most elegantly simple precept, he says, one that could end the Democratic drought, and yet they don't see it because they think targeting Bubba males alienates their base and smacks of racism...

...But when I pray about my heart, I get an answer right now...

...Surprisingly, Mudcat is rather bullish on Hillary Clinton's prospects, saying that while other Republicans and Democrats will "be banging on the left and right rails" throughout their primaries, it's in her interest to run down the center all the way through, meaning she'd have a leg up on the general election...

...Democrats, however, have written off these regions altogether, which Jarding can't understand...

...To his credit, he hates it...

...Jarding had some unusual ideas about how to pick up rural voters, but needed someone with the contacts and touch to make it happen...

...Taped to the box on Waylon Jennings's old stationery (given to him by Jennings's widow Jessi Colter, a personal friend) is an inscription from Mudcat that says, "One box of Mudcat's Deer S...

...But he doesn't curse for shock value so much as for percussion, working the blue words like a kick-drum to help his sentences get off on time...

...Even Bill Clinton, a southern white Protestant with more persuasive Bubba credentials, managed to carry only four southern states in each of his two victories...

...All told, it was a bravura performance...

...He first entered my consciousness in the summer of 2003, like some force of nature sent my way by the Color Gods of Feature Writing...

...I'll tell anyone who will listen how much I enjoy playing 'Ring of Fire,'" Kerry dorkishly told Newsweek...

...I meet Mudcat's partner at a restaurant in Old Town Alexandria...

...I know this, because when I'm in politics, and pray about it, I don't get any answers...

...His old DUI lawyer and friend Dickie Cran-well, then a powerhouse in the Virginia legislature, introduced him to the Warner campaign and Steve Jarding...

...This is not heavy math," he says...

...What does it taste like...

...He showed up on our pontoon boat Ivory-fresh and full of vinegar...

...After hours of listening to Mudcat talk about how he hates foreign interventions but supports a robust military, about how he detests high taxes and profligate spending, about how he can't stand demonizing all rich people as greedheads, and how he's fervently pro-Second Amendment, I tell him he sounds an awful lot like an old-school Republican...

...Damn right, it's true...

...On the morning after Kennedy was shot, his Hubert Humphrey-loving uncle broke the news...

...Standing around his kitchen, he offers me a beer...

...As a kid, he preached a youth service in which two congregants got saved...

...That is how we did it in Virginia and won...

...For half an hour or so, he glories in my humiliation...