He loved that raccoon. Say what you will about the rest of it—his campy countryness, the rampant media attention, the decision to enter politics—but Mark “Coonrippy” Brown adored his pet varmint.

Her name was Rebekah. He’d raised her from a baby. Fed her bottles. Cooked her scrambled eggs, her favorite. He trained her and gave her the run of his home in Gallatin, Tenn., outside Nashville. He posted YouTube clips of them playing. One video showed Rebekah perched on his shoulder as he showered. It was a hit, watched 400,000 times. But last summer, state wildlife agents, tipped off by the viral scene, seized Rebekah. Brown was devastated. He delivered the news to his son in a voice so somber that his son thought for sure he was talking about a family member. “Well,” Brown told him, “she’s gone.”

The raccoon was gone, and Brown begged the governor to intervene. He hired an attorney and went to court. A petition with 6,000 signatures called for the raccoon’s release. Nothing happened. Brown says he still doesn’t know exactly what became of Rebekah. And so, earlier this year, he decided to go from appealing for help from the state’s highest office to seeking it himself.

“He owes me an explanation,” Brown says of Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam. “And I thought, I’ll run for governor. And when somebody asks me for help, I’ll respond.”

It might sound like a bit of fun. But earlier this year, Brown filed the proper forms and garnered the necessary signatures—the local sheriff even signed his petition. This 55-year-old political novice qualified for the ballot in Tennessee’s Republican primary. He’ll face Haslam in August.

It could be dismissed as a stunt. When a reporter in Tennessee asked Haslam last month if he was confident he could survive Brown’s challenge, the governor laughed. That makes sense. Brown’s bid certainly feels like a no-shot, odd-ball affair. The loads of press attention so far have centered on the campaign’s novelty. Suspicions about his true intentions don’t soften when you learn that before he lost the raccoon, he snagged a deal for a reality TV show based on his country ways. But Brown insists his political ambitions have nothing to do with that.

He points out that he’s not the first politician in Tennessee—or anywhere else, really—to blur the lines of who deserves to be taken seriously as a candidate. Fred Thompson, the TV and film actor, served two terms as a U.S. senator from the Volunteer State. In 1948, the official Republican nominee for Tennessee governor was Roy Acuff, the Grand Ole Opry star. The country crooner sought the office on a lark. (And lost.)

And there is something seemingly genuine about Brown’s bid, a campaign based on the right to seek a redress of grievances, a political outsider pushing back with Tea Party-ish vigor against the established order, even if it does center on his right to keep and bear a raccoon.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2...l#ixzz2yGuqg1fk

This guy is only 55? The years have been kinda hard on him if you ask me.

They're vicious. I had a friend in high school that kept one, illegally. It attacked his visitors, teeth showing. He thought it was funny.

The video of "coonrippy" dancing with the raccoon, shows he's a real quack.