Boyd likens himself to Donald Trump in new TV ad

Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd declared that he and President Donald Trump are “a lot alike” in a new TV ad that has the tag line: “Randy Boyd: A conservative businessman, not a professional politician.”

The Boyd ads have inspired commentary by Jackson Baker on the striking contrast between what is seen on TV and what is heard from the candidate when he’s before an audience and taking questions. An excerpt:

If all you saw of Boyd were his TV ads, which are loaded with hard-edged innuendo about the Second Amendment, potential welfare cheats, illegal immigrants, and Democrats’ alleged indifference to the porousness of our southern border, you would think: This guy is the right-winger of the race, more Trumpian than arch-conservative gubernatorial rival Diane Black (Boyd’s TV spots even imply an affinity for the president) and a leftover from the heyday of the Tennessee Tea Party.

… But listen to Boyd au naturel, as when this veteran of the Haslam administration and architect of such programs as Tennessee Promise and Drive to 55 discusses his ideas in forums and at stump speeches and fund-raisers, and all of that is turned on its head. What Boyd talks about instead is the kind of ameliorist, problem-solving approach you would expect to hear from a centrist Democrat or a moderate Republican.

…Boyd’s answers (at a recent Memphis event), like the questions, were thoughtful and precise and exuded more the aura of a seminar than of a strictly political event. Why, then, do his TV ads depict him as “Conservative Randy Boyd” and seem to concentrate on the talking points of today’s right-wing fringe? Go figure. His official answer to that question some weeks back was: “If I’m running to be the Republican nominee in Tennessee, I want Republican voters to see that I’m one of them.”