Joey Osborne Goes Foxx-Hunting

I've paid little attention to Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's primary opponents. She always has 'em. She always beats 'em. They're like the mayflies of politics, so I don't invest much time in them. But I may have missed the boat with Joey Osborne, a millionaire entrepreneur running in the 5th District Republican primary with two others, Roman H. Chad Williams II and Steve Girard, all three diluting each other's potential solo strength against Foxx if, say, Joey Osborne had the Foxx opposition to himself. 

Joseph "Joey" Osborne got his start as an entrepreneur growing a family business in mosquito control into the largest mosquito control company in the US, headquartered in Hickory, with some 500 locations across the nation. He says on his Linked-In page, "I've created more than 50 business models for myself and others. Businesses that I've founded have generated more than half a billion dollars in revenue, creating more than 100 millionaires in the process." Some of those businesses: BizLab, 10X Innovations, Mainline Brands.

He's a very rich entrepreneur conservative who tells us he's conservative in the Calvin Coolidge mold, and I believe him. Old Cal was an honest man. There was not one ounce of greed in him, none of the me-first ethos of later times. Osborne talks intelligently about Coolidge in a 5-minute video titled "What My Conservatism Actually Looks Like," in which he makes the implicit comparison to trumpist politicians who grab and grow rich in office rather than actually practicing conservative values. "I don’t believe leadership should enrich the officeholder. I believe it should serve the public." Who has enriched herself the most in office if not Virginia Anne Foxx? She's known as one of the most high-volume stock traders in Congress, and it makes you wonder. (I can't copy Osborne's 5-min video here but you might want to watch it here.)

I looked deeper into Mosquito Authority and was pleased to read this about the ingredients in his spray: "We utilize all-natural, plant-based mosquito solutions with alternative botanical ingredients. The ingredients in our essential oil blend have been used for centuries to keep mosquitoes away." "Alternative botanical ingredients" sound delicious, but I'd like to know more. I'm naive about what else may be in his spray that I wouldn't brag about, but I take note that Osborne developed it to protect his three little girls who liked to be in the yard past dark on summer nights, and it doesn't seem likely to me that he would expose his daughters to toxins. He's not a greed-ass.

He seems more than merely intelligent -- actually downright bright (you can see it in his eyes) -- and calm and reasonable (even if I'm going to disagree with him on everything else, from abortion to well fare), with the inherent good sense of a practical man looking to make things work. He hinted in a most cryptic way that he was a solution-seeking moderate back in 2020 when he and 10 others ran in the Republican primary for the NC-11 seat. Osborne came in seventh. Lynda Bennett and Madison Cawthorn went to a run-off, which Cawthorn-of-Blessed-Memory won. Anyway, in 2020 Osborne said this to a reporter from the Asheville Citizen-Times: "I would never say that I would compromise my principles, but I think there always is a space between the divides.” I like the way he thinks, if I understand what "space between the divides" means.