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Chris Jones' Arkansas campaign ad shows how extraordinary Black politicians must be (1078 hits)

Chris Jones' Arkansas campaign ad shows how extraordinary Black politicians must be
He's a nuclear physicist and priest — and wants to be Arkansas' first Black governor.

By Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

Until Monday, the only thing I knew about the race for governor in Arkansas was that former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had thrown her hat into the ring. I was fully prepared to ignore the ensuing Trump-infused circus over the next two years. But then I saw a video pass across my Twitter timeline. Two minutes and 37 seconds later, I was convinced that this might be one of the most interesting campaigns in the country.

Chris Jones announced his candidacy for governor June 15. As I learned in his campaign’s announcement video, he is an actual nuclear physicist and an ordained minister as of 2017. He went to Morehouse College on a NASA scholarship and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate school. And now he’s running to replace the term-limited Gov. Asa Hutchinson as leader of the state his family has lived in for eight generations now.

Political candidates, especially first-timers, are encouraged to figure out the story that they want to tell the voters. The best versions draw from both biography and policy, mixing them together into a personal narrative that the candidate implies will carry through into how they govern or legislate. And Jones’ team knocked this one out of the park.

READ MORE: Chris Jones' Arkansas campaign ad shows how extraordinary Black politicians must be https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/dr-chris-jon...