Albert R. Hunt, Columnist

It’s Center Versus Right in North Carolina

A battle for a Republican House seat features a Democratic ex-Marine in a baptismal tub.

October 7, 2018 at 2:00 PM UTC

Albert R. Hunt is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was the executive editor of Bloomberg News, before which he was a reporter, bureau chief and executive Washington editor at the Wall Street Journal.

There’s a lot of politics going on.
Photographer: Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty Images

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There’s an unusual political commercial running these days around Charlotte, North Carolina, showing a candidate being baptized with water from the Euphrates River while serving as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.

The candidate is Dan McCready, who’s running for the U.S. House of Representatives as a newcomer and moderate Democrat against Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor and Christian evangelical leader. One of the stars of the Democrats' class of challengers for Republican-held House seats in the November midterm election, McCready is inoculating himself against the customary charge from the religious right that Democrats are anti-faith left-wingers.