Democrat Running in Virginia Discovers New Southern Accent in New Home State

The leading Democratic candidate for a Virginia House seat the party is targeting in 2018 moved to the state just a year-and-a-half ago, but you'd never know it from watching his campaign's first ad.

Roger Dean Huffstetler, who is both outraising and outspending his Democratic opponents in Virginia's largely rural fifth district, announcedhis campaign less than a year after he moved in the summer of 2016 to Charlottesville, a blue city located near the center of a rural red district. His first ad—which, based on a nearly $50,000 expenditure, appears to have been created by a major D.C. advertising firm that made ads for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns—attempts to erase any outsider image he may have.

The ad, "Best I Can," opens with Huffstetler driving an old white Ford truck through a Virginia farm and then sitting atop a bale of hay to speak of his rural upbringing. The way he speaks, however, caught the ear of one Virginia voter.

"I've seen him speak publicly," said Richard Foxx, a farm owner from inside the district. "The R.D. Huffstetler I've heard over the last year and a half doesn't quite sound like our current governor Ralph Northam, but in the ad he sounds a lot like our current governor Ralph Northam."

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