Southern political personalities, like sweet corn,
travel badly. They lose flavor with every hundred yards away from the
patch." When A.J. Liebling wrote those words, he was thinking of Earl
Long, brother to longtime populist Louisiana governor Huey Long. As a native of
the region with a taste for history, I get his drift. Of late, however, two
Southern political personalities have impressed me. They seem progressive,
enlightened. Both work in the world of food. And both hail from South Carolina, a state infamous for bad political ideas like, say, secession. Robert Barber ran for lieutenant governor last year and lost by
a hair. When he's not playing politico, he runs a restaurant on the South Carolina Coast near Charleston. It's called Bowen's Island. They're famous for their oysters, harvested by
locals from the marshes that surround the island. When Barber, still in the
throes of his campaign, walked on stage at the 2006 James Beard Foundation Gala
to accept an America's Classics Award, he wore a tux. But he also wore wading
boots, a gesture of solidarity for the men who pick his oysters, men who
weren't able to travel to New York and share the stage with him. More recently,
I've gotten to know Emile
De Felice. He's a Columbia-based farmer who raises Ossabaw hogs and tilts
at various governmental windmills. When Barber was running for lieutenant
governor, DeFelice was angling to be South Carolina Commissioner of
Agriculture. His slogan, geared to give voice to the local foods movement, was
"Put Your State on Your Plate." Both Barber and DeFelice lost. But
from this distance, they look like a dream ticket for food-obsessive South Carolinians headed to the ballot box in 2010.
