THE 49-year-old political neophyte who improbably toppled Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, in Virginia's Republican primary on June 11th is still something of a mystery. But one thing is certain: David Brat knows how to work a crowd. Unlike Mr Cantor, who earned a reputation for seeming aloof and distant in his 14 years in Washington, Mr Brat is friendly and animated. At barbecues and church gatherings he can be seen bounding about like a Labrador puppy, glad-handing old folks and kissing babies. Mr Cantor, on the other hand, preferred invitation-only events and was often seen plying his district from the comforts of a massive black SUV driven by a plain-clothes police officer. (Read here why Mr Brat’s victory is bad for both the Republicans and America.) Tall, square-jawed and bespectacled, the Tea Party-backed Mr Brat is a college economics professor whose views are somewhat Rand-ian (Ayn and, perhaps, Paul). He believes in low taxes and light regulation, and has a keen interest in the relationship between economics and faith. In his doctoral dissertation (he earned his PhD in economics at American University in Washington, DC), Mr Brat attributes a great deal of scientific, governmental and economic progress in 19th-century Europe to Calvinist Protestantism. Following Mr Brat's odds-defying win, reporters, lobbyists and political operatives have been combing through this paper in search of clues to his thinking.

Mr Brat's stump speeches are often economics lectures. He enjoys outlining for voters how the Federal Reserve and Congress bungled the slow recovery from the Great Recession, and then skewers Mr Cantor for his cosy relationship with Wall Street (powerful financial firms were the incumbent's top three donors in the current fund-raising cycle). Mr Brat’s view of the federal stimulus is unambiguous: "Well, they got that wrong."

Born in Detroit and raised in rural Alma, Michigan, Mr Brat was educated at Hope College, a small religious liberal-arts school in Michigan. He worked briefly for an accounting firm in Detroit before returning to his studies, first at Princeton Theological Seminary, then at American University. In 1996 Mr Brat joined the faculty of Randolph-Macon College, a small liberal-arts college in Ashland, Virginia, about 20 miles north of Richmond. The college, founded in 1830 and affiliated with the Methodist Church, sits along the main rail link between Washington and the conservative Central Virginia heartland that Mr Brat may be representing in Congress.

Married and the father of two, Mr Brat had been on the periphery of politics until 2006, when he was appointed by a Democratic governor, Timothy Kaine, to a bipartisan economic advisory council. (Bob McDonnell, Mr Kaine's Republican successor, reappointed him.) It was this appointment by Mr Kaine—now a US Senator—that inspired what many now see as a misfire from Mr Cantor's campaign: a television commercial in which Mr Brat was depicted as an ivory-tower liberal professor who had endorsed Mr Kaine’s plan to raise taxes for transportation. Mr Brat angrily dismissed the commercial as perfidy, and the facts were largely on his side. The economic advisory council exists only to supply Virginia's governor with advice on the direction of the state economy. It never took a position on Mr Kaine's unsuccessful tax gambits. And it was Mr McDonnell—the Republican—who won higher taxes. The ad largely served to raise Mr Brat’s low profile by piquing voter interest in this relative unknown.

Mr Brat, who also served as an economic adviser to a top Virginia legislator, had tangled with Mr Cantor's political machine before. In 2011 he sought a seat in the state legislature, but was thwarted because Mr Cantor's loyalists had someone else in mind: the son of a powerful utility executive.

The general-election campaign may prove more civil than the primary, if only because Mr Brat's opponent is a fellow member of the Randolph-Macon faculty: Jack Trammell, a sociologist who runs the school's programme for disabled students and writes novels on the side, with one about vampires "in the works", according to his Amazon profile. The two occasionally play basketball together. (We consider the virtues of this race here.)

Before Mr Brat's upset, Mr Trammell—also a newcomer to politics—was considered a throwaway candidate. But even with the district's strong Republican leanings, neither party is taking anything for granted.

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