In what is being called one of the most stunning primary-election upsets in Congressional history, an economics professor with Tea Party backing but little name recognition and only $200,000 in his campaign coffers soundly defeated the U.S. House of Representatives’ majority leader, Rep. Eric I. Cantor of Virginia, in voting on Tuesday for the Republican nomination.
The professor, David A. Brat, a former chairman of the department of economics and business at Randolph-Macon College, told supporters at a victory celebration on Tuesday night that “the reason we won this campaign is dollars don’t vote—you do.”
Mr. Brat, who joined the faculty at Randolph-Macon in 1996, holds a Ph.D. in economics from American University and a master’s from the Princeton Theological Seminary. He is director of the college’s BB&T Ethics Program, which receives support from the BB&T Charitable Foundation.
According to a CV on Randolph-Macon’s website, apparently last updated in 2012, his most recent book project was titled “Ethics as Leading Economic Indicator? What Went Wrong? Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition and Human Reason.”
Other publication titles listed there include “God and Advanced Mammon—Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?,” published in April 2011 in Interpretation: a Journal of Bible and Theology, and “An Analysis of the Moral Foundations in Ayn Rand,” presented at a conference in South Carolina in 2010.
Mr. Brat told the National Review, in an article published in January, that while he is not a Randian, “he has been influenced by Atlas Shrugged and appreciates Rand’s case for human freedom and free markets.”
In a coincidence, Mr. Brat’s defeat of Mr. Cantor all but ensures that whoever wins the U.S. House seat this fall will be a Randolph-Macon professor. The Democratic candidate, John Trammell, is also on the faculty there.
Mr. Trammell directs two programs—the honors program and disability support services—and also teaches in the sociology department. He holds a Ph.D. in education and a master-of-education degree, both from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Mr. Brat, who called his defeat of Mr. Cantor “a miracle from God,” told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the coming campaign would be about “returning the country to constitutional principles, returning the country to Judeo-Christian principles, and returning the country to free-market principles.”
