I’ve been following the Scott Kleeb Senate race in Nebraska, and not only because Scott Kleeb is incredibly HOT. Kleeb raises beef (and even if he didn’t – coming from Nebraska he’d have to know a thing or two about farming and ranching). The New Yorker has a piece on him called Where’s the Beef? … not terribly informative about how Kleeb will be for food and ag policy but at least it’s not the hit job they did on Obama.

And he made references to his childhood: he grew up moving with his parents from one military base to another and spent time with his grandparents in Broken Bow, Nebraska. Then, in 1998, he started working summers on a ranch while getting his Ph.D., in American history. As part of his dissertation research, he spent a year living in his old pickup and driving around to state parks. Once, he was chased by a bear. The thesis topic? “The Atlantic West: Cowboys, Capitalists and the Making of an American Myth.” “What’s interesting is we tend to think about the cowboy as being this iconic American image, but in reality he resold his cattle globally, and he was part of the world economy,” Kleeb said. He does something similar, raising organic Kobe beef, which he sells to restaurants in Los Angeles and Europe. “I spend my days doing paperwork,” he said. I guess we’ll have to work on converting Kleeb over to the idea of local food?