Slingshot: The Defeat of Eric Cantor tells a story. That alone makes it unusual for a work of political science. Even more unusual is the story of how the book came to be. Randolph-Macon College economics professor David Brat, still mad because he was denied the Republican nomination for a Virginia House of Delegates seat in 2011 in favor of a rich-kid protégé of Eric Cantor, decided to challenge the House Republican Leader’s bid for renomination in the 2014 primary. David Elliot Meyer, an undergrad at Randolph-Macon with a required research project to complete, got Brat’s permission to shadow the candidate during his seemingly quixotic campaign. Alone among those following the primary, Meyer predicted that Brat would win. He did, handily. With help from two of Meyer’s poli sci professors, Lauren Cohen Bell and Ronald Keith Gaddie, the Class of ’15 graduate has written a book about how and why this happened. As was the case with Battle for the Big Sky, the book about the 2012 Montana Senate election reviewed in last Thursday’s column, Slingshot centers its analysis both
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