Todd C. Frankel (@tcfrankel) is an enterprise reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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.

***

Brown is a mountain of a man with a Moses-like beard. He was born so close to the Cumberland River that he was, he says, “300 yards from being a duck.” He has lived all his life in Gallatin, a town of 30,000 that once was small enough that if his truck broke down on Highway 31, he’d be certain to see someone he knew to give him a ride.

Coonrippy with Rebekah. | YouTube

He took the nickname “Coonrippy” from his great-great grandmother, Lucinda Coon Rippy. “I don’t know what caused someone to name a girl child Coon,” Brown explains, “but it’s on her headstone.” It’s also the name of the trading company selling his clay figurines and other wares at folk festivals, and he hot-brands “CR” on the wood furniture he crafts.

Brown is a longtime federally licensed firearms dealer, but doesn’t sell much in the way of guns anymore. He has held a slew of jobs, including pipefitter and a short stint as Gallatin’s animal control officer. He once ran his own wildlife management company. He thinks that’s why he got the call about Rebekah last May.

“I had a reputation for knowing how to care for animals,” he says.

A high school student called him about some raccoon babies needing a home. Brown took one and gave her a Biblical name, Rebekah. He has kept wild animals as pets since he was teenager. When he was about 18, he had a hawk named Aesop. Then a screech owl named Mr. Bird. Crowman the crow. Trophy the deer. A possum named Henry.

A few years ago, he found a baby raccoon and named him Gunshow. He trained the raccoon, even got him to use a litter box. In July 2012, Brown was playing around with Gunshow when his girlfriend decided to shoot some video and upload it to YouTube. The clip lasts 30 seconds. It shows a shirtless Brown with Gunshow nibbling on his arm. “Oww, would you quit it?” Brown says. He applies a few squirts of Hannah Montana body spray. Gunshow suddenly loses all interest in biting. The “Hannah Montana Coon Repellent” video has gotten more than 1.2 million views. A few weeks later, another video. In this one, Brown dances to Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” on his front porch, holding Gunshow by his front paws. That attracted 1.3 million views.

Reality show producers noticed, likely with dreams of a Duck Dynasty II. Brown even took meetings in New York City. “I was like a lost person in tall grass in Manhattan,” he says. He is now tentatively developing a show with Hot Snakes Media, makers of TLC’s “Breaking Amish.”

But in January 2013, Brown posted a new video: A 4-1/2 minute tribute to Gunshow set to Dolly Parton singing the sappy ballad “Just When I Needed You Most.” Gunshow had died. As he talks about his pet in the video, Brown sounds like he’s choking up.

Then Rebekah came along. Last July, he and his girlfriend posted the video of Brown and Rebekah taking a shower. It went viral, too. Days later, Wolf Blitzer was on CNN introducing a short humorous piece about the unlikely pair.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) jumped on the case. It’s against state law to keep wildlife without a permit. At the end of July, two agents approached Brown at a local coffee shop. He had to surrender Rebekah or face a fine, maybe even criminal charges. Brown reluctantly agreed to turn over his raccoon. He watched the agents load Rebekah into a plastic carrier and whisk her away in a state vehicle. He couldn’t hear if she was whistling like she usually did whenever he was out of sight.

“We were her parents,” Brown says. “I can only think what that ride in a dog carrier to a truck was like.”

***

This is when Brown the political activist was born. He called the governor’s office repeatedly. An online petition asking for the governor’s help was launched. The petition was mailed to the governor’s office, Brown says, only to be returned unopened. Brown claims his pleas went unanswered. “What I don’t get is why the governor didn’t just call me after supper one night. It’s a simple thing,” he says.

5 Candidates Tailor-Made for the Internet Age Dan Lacey proved his viral chops a few years ago when his portraits of Sarah Palin and John McCain with pancakes stacked on their heads became blogosphere favorites. (He has since moved on to more ambitious works, such as President Obama naked with a unicorn or piloting the flight that landed on the Hudson River.) So when Lacey announced his 2014 candidacy for Minnesota’s second congressional district—on Flickr, no less—he seemed poised to become the Internet’s favorite politician. Alas, it seems that the so-called Painter of Pancakes has not formally filed, though he has continued to paint unflattering portraits of Republican incumbent John Klein, adorned with the requisite flapjacks. After a string of less-than-platinum records, a stint on Broadway and a UNICEF ambassadorship, former American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken announced in early February that he would be challenging incumbent Rep. Renee Ellmers in North Carolina’s second district. In response to rumors that the singer was gearing up for a candidacy, Ellmers dismissed his credibility in February, telling a Washington-based radio station, “Apparently his performing career isn’t going so well and he’s bored.” But Aiken outstrips his opponent in at least one regard: His 51,000 Twitter followers dwarf her 11,000. After she made a name for herself pushing a dogged campaign to start White History Month, former SNL star and Tea Party activist Victoria Jackson announced in February that she would run for a seat on a Tennessee county commission. She has cast her campaign in grandiose terms, telling the Tennessean that she is fighting a “spiritual battle over the soul of America” and making a “sexually explicit” sex-ed book one of her first political targets. Although Jackson’s zaniness has morphed considerably from her ditzy Saturday Night Live act, it still makes her ripe for ridicule—and page views. Susanne Atanus, who recently won the GOP nomination for Illinois’ ninth congressional district, told the Chicago Daily Herald in January that natural disasters, autism and Alzheimer’s were divine punishment for “abortions and same-sex marriage and civil unions.” (“God is angry,” she said.) Atanus’ chances look pretty slim in her solidly blue Chicago-area district, but she certainly makes headlines. Jake Rush, who’s running for Florida’s third congressional district as a self-described straight shooter and pro-life Republican, also happens to be a vampire. Rush used to moonlight as a member of Mind’s Eye Society, a national network of supernatural live-action role players, assuming the persona of characters with names such as as Chazz Darling and Lord Staas van der Winst. He has also reportedly held a leadership role in a similarly themed Gainesville, Fla. group called “Covenant of the Poisoned Absinthe.” In response to a story on Florida’s SaintPetersBlog about his extracurricular activities, Rush downplayed his role-playing as a “gaming and theatre hobby. “All my life, I’ve been blessed with a vivid imagination,” he said.

But the governor’s office did respond, says Haslam’s spokesman David Smith. “Our constituent services office was in contact via email and over the phone.” Smith also says the governor’s office never received the petition. If it was truly returned unopened, then the petition likely never made it out of the facility that processes the governor’s mail, Smith said.

“He wanted the governor to step in,” said Smith. “And they explained that TWRA was handling this and this was a law that had been in place for a long time.”

The conflict briefly intensified the media’s interest. Good Morning America laid out the case, leading the studio hosts to banter about the topic. George Stephanopoulos noted Brown’s argument and the long odds of getting the raccoon returned. “He makes a pretty compelling case, though,” he said.

Then the cameras moved on.

But Brown was not done. He hired Chris Jones, a Chattanooga attorney specializing in wildlife law. In October, they filed a motion in state court to stop the release or euthanization of Rebekah pending a hearing to argue that Brown’s personal property—the raccoon—should be returned to him. The raccoon was valued at $12,000. The state attorney general’s office objected, noting that Brown had willingly signed over the animal. “Those game wardens strong-armed him to sign,” Jones counters. A judge listened to arguments from both sides for three hours before siding with the state.

State officials knew, however, this was no ordinary raccoon. The wildlife agents had deposited Rebekah at Walden’s Puddle, a wildlife rehabilitation facility based in Nashville. The nonprofit’s staff were inundated with calls and even threats over Rebekah. Plans were made to turn Rebekah into an ambassador animal, allowing her to travel around the state to teach schoolchildren about wildlife.

Brown says he heard only rumors about what had happened to Rebekah and didn’t know what to think. One night he got an anonymous phone call claiming the raccoon had been shipped off to the Chattanooga Zoo.

But when Brown announced he was running for governor in January, he actually didn’t mention the raccoon. He unveiled his bid with, appropriately enough, a YouTube video, joining a modern political tradition. That’s how Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty announced their presidential ambitions. It’s how Clay Aiken told that he was running for Congress from North Carolina.

In that first campaign video, Brown wears a camouflage shirt and wide-brimmed hat. He sits in front of a three-starred Tennessee state flag hanging on a wall.

“Just like the purity of this apple,” he says at one point, picking up a Red Delicious from a fruit bowl beside him. He pauses. “Well, I don’t know where I was going with that. But I guarantee there’ll be changes made. Changes you’ll like. You call me, I promise I’ll answer the phone.”

That is the reason he is running.

Recently, officials from the state wildlife agency and Walden’s Puddle gave their fullest accounting to date of what happened to Brown’s raccoon.

Rebekah was not sent on any educational mission or to a zoo. Making her into an ambassador animal would only prolong the controversy. She was evaluated at Walden’s Puddle for her ability to return to the wild and then housed for several weeks with other raccoons, where she had minimal human interaction. On November 18, with no fanfare and at an undisclosed location, the raccoon that launched a gubernatorial campaign was released to the wild.

Rebekah is out there, somewhere.