Did Cooter From ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ Beat Eric Cantor?

Eleanor Clift

Ex-Rep. Ben Jones, the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ star who once got his ‘butt kicked’ by the majority leader, wrote an open letter calling on all voters to turn out against him—and it worked.

A larger than life country character in real life and as Cooter on the 1980s TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, former Georgia congressman Ben Jones was basking in reflected glory when I reached him Wednesday at his hideaway in rural Little Washington, Virginia. “My new quote, I just wrote it on the wall,” he exulted. “There’s no freude like schadenfreude.”

He was referring to what’s been dubbed “the Cooter factor,” an open letter the Democrat wrote encouraging voters of all political stripes to participate in Tuesday’s open primary in Virginia and vote against Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Jones portrayed it as a way to “make a statement about the dysfunctional Congress and ‘politics as usual.’” The letter went viral, and GOP pollster John McLaughlin said a surge of new voters who were not Republicans was partly to blame for Cantor’s surprise defeat.

Only too happy to claim bragging rights, Jones reminded me that he is responsible for the downfall not only of the current majority leader but of former speaker Newt Gingrich. He ran against Gingrich in 1994, and though he lost the race by a wide margin, the ethics charges he brought against Gingrich eventually brought him down. In 2002, Jones ran against Cantor, another losing effort. “Both of them whipped my ass, they beat me like a rented mule, and here I am feeling great, and they are all hangdog today,” he said.

Between his political forays, Jones built a successful career as an actor, singer, and entrepreneur with Cooter’s museum and stores in Tennessee and Virginia. Democrats came to him in 2002; they needed someone to run against Cantor, and he reluctantly agreed, knowing it was a long shot and that he would be outspent. The race left him with an intense dislike of Cantor. “He ducked debates, slandered me in slick mailings, questioned my patriotism and even mocked my Southern heritage,” Jones wrote in his open letter. “He simply cannot be taken at his word. You can call that ‘sour grapes’ if you want to, but I am just telling it the way it was, and surely is.” He endorsed Cantor’s opponent, college professor David Brat, calling him “an old-school conservative.”

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