Last month, Mitch McConnell made a visit deep into rural Kentucky, harkening back to his 1984 campaign for Senate. In the midst of that campaign, the upstart challenger, who had been counted out by the oddsmakers, was approached by a man who asked him to make a promise.
“I own a store just a few miles from here. If you win, I want you to come visit,” the man asked. “We’ve never had a United States Senator in our town. And if you come, I’ll give you a MoonPie and an RC Cola.”
The man who did the asking was Jerry Arnette, the owner of a small convenience store in the unincorporated hamlet of Grab, in south-central Kentucky. For Jerry to call it a town had been generous. It can be more lovingly and aptly described as “a spot in the road.” It is neither a typical stop in the whirlwind statewide campaigns of politicians nor, as the original question suggested, a place that a U.S. Senator would have occasion to frequent. Nevertheless, McConnell agreed, visiting Grab, Kentucky, for the first time in 1985 as a freshly sworn-in United States Senator.
Jordan Harris
The choice of promised snack wasn’t insignificant then, or now. Sometime before April of 1917, Earl Mitchel Sr, a traveling salesman for the Chattanooga Bakery, created the MoonPie with the Kentucky coal miner in mind. Mitchel had asked a Kentucky miner to describe what kind of snack he would like to eat with his lunch.
“Something with graham cracker and marshmallow dipped in chocolate.” The miner is said to have answered. When Mitchell asked how big it should be, the miner looked up at the sky and made a circle with his hands replying, “As big as the moon.”
The story may be folklore, or it may be an accurate history, but the salesman’s ambition was fulfilled all the same. The MoonPie was enough of a success with the miners that the Chattanooga Bakery sent the new creation out with other traveling salesmen too, spreading its popularity beyond Appalachia and around the South. Later, during the Great Depression, the MoonPie met its famous coupling when one could be purchased alongside an RC Cola for only a dime.
For a century, the pair has been packed into lunch pails and has long superseded the status of a mere afternoon snack. Nothing in the rich panoply of southern cuisine is as readily identified with the working man. Today, when someone references a MoonPie and an RC Cola, it immediately conjures images of coal miners, farmers, and construction workers. It invokes a certain idealism too, of a hard day’s work, a man whose “word is his bond,” or neighbors that will “give the shirt off their back.” Put simply, it embodies the virtues of rural American life.
So, in 1984 when Jerry Arnette offered the signature snack of the rural South to Mitch McConnell, who was the top official in Kentucky’s largest and most urban county, it was more of a litmus test than a perk of the visit.
The young lawyer passed.
Republicans are increasingly associated with rural areas, with some of the most significant county-level shifts since 1984 happening in the Upper South, leaving the party to face a similar test. Regardless of results in November, the party will begin the task of bridging an inherent divide between the traditional country club and suburban base with the new rural one. Failure can mean permanent minority status.
The answer to courting the rural base lies in MoonPie Politics, and the strategy that McConnell highlighted in his visit to Grab last month. The Majority Leader has achieved rural acceptance without faking a Southern drawl or making painfully transparent political appeals. He has done it by respecting rural culture and way of life.
This is where Democrats, and some Republicans, have recently faltered, showing up in rural communities with no understanding, even less appreciation, but a handful of policy prescriptions. They are the types that you usually hear later exclaim in disgust, “don’t they know we are helping them?”
The same attitude made “carpetbagger” a pejorative.
McConnell has long taken the inverse approach, a fact on full display in his third visit to Grab. Respect rural life first, understand the culture, appreciate the tremendous contributions, and allow effective policy solutions to follow.
Republicans should take note. They will find that there is no better compliment or key to victory than being “the kind of guy you could have a MoonPie with.”
Jordan Harris is the Founder of Pegasus Institute, the largest public policy think-tank in Kentucky.
