Newne Carriebean7 wrote:
NS Nation Name:Newne Carriebean7
Character Name: Maxine Caroline Durant
Character Gender: Female
Character Age: 58
Character Height: 5'7
Character Weight: 126 pounds
Character Position/Role/Job:
-Member of the U.S House of Representatives for Mississippi's 3rd Congressional District
(since January 3rd, 2015)
-Former member of the Mississippi State Senate for the 31st District
(January 3rd, 2005 - January 3rd, 2014)
-Manager of the Yazoo Star Newspaper
(January 7, 1996 - December 25, 2004)
- Journalist for the Sun-Herald Newspaper
(September 24, 1986 - November 11, 1995)
Character Country/State of Birth: Yazoo City, Mississippi
Character State of Residence: Cedar Grove, Mississippi
Character Party Affiliation: Republican
Main Strengths:
Well-liked in her District:
Stemming from her first election, she has vowed to be a voice for the conservatives against a "left-wing mob in washintin' ". First deriding President Rashid Baharia as a "muslim communist", this type of rhetoric has only enflamed her conservative base within the district. An Elephant that barrels through walls, she is known to be as stubborn as always in defending conservative values.
Enjoys strong support from Gun's Rights and Anti-abortion activist groups;
Owing to her firm positions for the defense of not only the 2nd Amendment but of the right of the unborn, Maxine's house bids are usually accompanied with a slight nod by the NRA and the National Right to Life Committees, often in the form of donations to her house bids. In the sparingly few television adverts she puts out a few months prior to election time, they are usually filled to the brim with an average woman or man in the district explaining why they liked her policies, with a last emphasis being put on Maxine's staunch support for the 2nd Amendment or for the rights of the unborn against "communists".
Main Weaknesses:
History of controversial statements and opinions:
It's no small secret that Maxine has garnered attention from more than the local papers for her off the cuff remarks and statements. Apart from normal whites supporting the Republicans and Blacks flocking towards the Democratic Party, Maxine's mouth tends to raise eyebrows at Mississippi, or her specifically.
Foul mouth;
Maxine is infamous in private for her, in her words: "Spicier dialogue". She is known to lack a real filter when it comes to choosing what to say and how to say it when there is not a script in front of her face when filming a television advert for her house campaigns.
Inability to Compromise:
When given the choice between amnesty for illegal immigrant families in exchange for increased funding for the President Wolf's prized boarder wall, she adamantly was a vocal opponent of the deal from the right wing. This is just one example over her long legislative series of votes where she not only towed the line of the extremist wing of the Republican Party , but refused to look the enemy in the eye at all.
Biography: Born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, on April 12th, 1962 to Garfield Sylvester Durant and Vanessa T. Katherine, Maxine's early childhood would be consumed with visits to the local library, fond memories of festive thanksgivings, Halloweens and Easters with Durant and Katherine's parents and hot summer days when her father would turn on the hose to cool them off. One of her fondest memories however, was when her father would take her up shooting pumpkins and October fruit when she was old enough. The moment she held a firearm in her hands, she knew she loved the smell of gunpowder and the feel of the trigger. This feeling for the Trigger would turn into something of a relationship, with her jokingly admitting years later when running for the house that "If I wasn't married already, Id would've married my gun".
Apart from a love of firearms, she developed intricate hobbies of collecting stamps. She found a weird mixture of meditation and comforting nostalgia in her younger years from the experiences of shooting a line of pumpkins every fall, then to come inside after raking up all the leaves to leave for a trip to the post office for a fresh roll of stamps, courtesy of her mother.
In 1980, after graduating from High School, Maxine tentatively decided to enroll in Ole Miss University. Her plan was to come out with (hopefully) a law degree after a few years, though she decided to pursue a business degree instead. She got her first real whiff of politics during this time too. It was during the 1980 Presidential campaign that she started to think for herself and chart which way of the political aisle she would tack towards. It wasn't a very steady course. She admits in her early years that "I was all over the place". She would learn about a certain subject, then hear upon it on the news, then chat with it at her multiple after-school jobs that ranged from dishwasher at the local greasy spoon to secretary at a child's day-care.
She volunteered hard of the state's senior U.S Senator, John Stennis, in what would be his seventh and last term in the 1982 Mississippi Senate election. She knocked on doors all throughout the state, crossed into a third of the state's counties and wore out her voice giving dozens of stump speeches in support of the old man. In the end, Stennis handily beat back (not Haley Baurbor) by almost thirty points, allowing her to sit in smug satisfaction at yet another conservative victory for the Democratic Party. Following the completion of her general studies, she left Ol' Miss with a bachelor's degree in Business in 1984.
In 1986, Maxine talked to her friends from college about pooling their money together in order to open up a newspaper. Many of those friends were unsympathetic to her idea, but suggested that instead of the risk of starting a small business, that she would instead work for an already established Newspaper. Despite her misgivings of the "lyin' press", she went back to her college and tried to convince them to hire her as an editor for the Daily Mississippian. They rejected her as they had little in the way of opportunities for a woman of her experience, but gave her a reference to the Sun-Herald. Taking her degree in Business from Ol' Miss and her friends' advice, she applied for and was hired as a journalist at the Herald.
During this time, she would bemoan the loss of 'traditional values' of the 'old days' and call for a 'return to Stennis's Hour'. Her opinion pieces within the paper were moderately successful, though she did get tons of push-back from the more african-american sections of the state and liberal democrats who derided the paper as 'a return to the plantation'. In her writings she pushed more to the right, though would consistently continue to support and offer endorsements to Democrats in local Mississippi races, so long as they were 'conservative enough' for her. Eventually, this would give way to her begrudgingly backing Republican candidates in local races when there lacked a consistent, in her words "voice for conservative values from the Democrats". Maxine would notice a distinct shift in both parties around the end of the (Not Bush Sr.) and the start of the (Not Bill Clinton) years. The most alarming issues were the left-wards shifts the Democratic Party was taking on Gun-Control and Abortion. In 1988, when John Stennis retired from his senate seat, Maxine decided to endorse the conservative Democrat in the race in an opinion-piece for the Sun-Herald. She would later be disappointed when the conservative-Democrat lost to the Republican (Not Trent-Lott), however, she decided that the Democratic Party had 'abandoned traditional conservatives' in her eyes. With this change of outlook, on August 5th, 1994 she officially changed her party registration from Democrat to the GOP, abandoning the donkey for the elephant.
Shortly after, Maxine decided to leave the journal and start up her own newspaper with a few dis-satisfied employees of the Sun-Herald. Pooling their funds together, they rented out a modest office building for cheap and inaugurated theYazoo Star Newspaper in January of 1996, with Maxine as the manager of the new enterprise.
Maxine became a firebrand for conservatism, railing against the incumbent liberal administration in the White House for years until an avid subscriber wrote to her and wanted her to run for the State Senate. During this time, her son Norton was just going through his driving test, and became worried that the time campaigning would hurt his development and lead to him 'lashing out', so she decided to hold her horses on running for the State Senate, at least until her son was out of the house.
When Norton gave Maxine and Miles a kiss to head out the door to go to Florida State University the home was emptier now (1). She decided that, without the worry of managing the home, she began to plot the groundwork for a campaign for the State Senate in Mississippi's 31st District. In 2000, she launched her campaign as an insurgency against the well-funded incumbent, trying to attack him from the right-wing. Unfortunately, she was defeated by a margin of 64% for the incumbent to her 35% (1% for another right-wing candidate). Still, the result was notable as the incumbent hadn't had to campaign for the primary in his past five elections, forcing him to blunt Maxine's challenge with tacks to the right.
Maxine came back with a vengeance in 2004, rallying her tight-nit base, learning from her time supporting Stennis throughout the state and using her newspaper to promote her right-wing message to the voters. It would end up being enough... just barely defeating the Republican incumbent in the primary by a margin of 51.4% to 48.6% before cruising to an easy victory in the General election that fall following the conclusion of the 'real election' for the Senate seat.
Now stuck with the other state senators in Jackson, Maxine would carve a name for herself as a 'staunch conservative'. By far her highest moment was when she pushed for the impeachment of the state's Democratic Governor. She would drag (Not-Ronnie Musgrove) through the mud, though her calls for impeachment were never seriously entertained by the State legislature or even by the Republican Party of Mississippi. Her voting record in the state house was typical with traditional republican positions. She was a good old lady and frequently toed the party line when she needed to, though when she did have objections to certain bills that were gifted from the state house she would vote against them. She proved to be uncontroversial enough to warrant multiple re-elections from her constituents, often with little opposition to her state senate seat. She would be re-elected in a landslide in 2008 and by another large margin in 2012 to the 31st District.
2014 was when the thought occurred to her: "'National Politics, now that's somethin'". So, Maxine tentatively held her breath for her home seat that was represented by (Not Gregg-Harper). (Not Gregg-Harper) let the gates fly open when he announced his retirement from Congress. This was Maxine's chance at national politics, so she eagerly announced her candidacy for the seat. Although she personally loathed 'identity politics', she was willing to let Republican staff members on her campaign for her prospective House seat emphasize the 'historic' choice she would be as the 3rd Congressional district's first female representative if elected. She began to court the anti-abortion, evangelical protestants within the Republican Party, often holding rallies and giving speeches outside of churches or near religious institutions. Come the time for the general primary, she managed to elbow out three other contenders for the seat, mostly by subtle undertones that she was a woman and that her "staunchly conservative" record would be a sure-fire way to prevent a "RINO" from handling the seat. The latter remark ended up backfiring so as to mobilize her opponents towards the polls come primary day, but was blessed by a traditionally low turnout which enabled Maxine to narrowly carry off a win by a margin of 34.6% to her other two opponents 32.8% and 32.6%.
With that, she was forced into a run-off election between her conservative opponent, a former fire-fighter. It was around this time that the fire-fighter's campaign began to spread rumors of her racial history. Though these attacks didn't go anywhere, they did force her to blunt a tad in her messaging. She defended herself from the "allegations" by dismissing certain wild-taled stories and sensationalist slander that she knew was fake news. In one instance, she firmly defended herself and her family against a report that her father was a member of the KKK and had participated in a lynching against a local civil rights activist. She howled at her opponent for resulting to such "low blow tactics" and stated that "My family's a simple group like all y'alls. Do we make mistakes, sure. Do we participate inna lynchin's 'gainst good black folks? No, my family didn't do that! They're Christian folks, they ain't that bad of people, the blacks." Eventually, more thorough investigation noted that the story was indeed faked by her opponent's campaign. As her opponent was dealing with the fallout of the faked lynching controversy, the primary just so happened to occur in the midst of all this. This resulted in Maxine winning against the fireman by a 54.3% to 45.7%.
However, more controversy emerged in the general election when a 1998 periodical that she had written was brought forwards by her Democratic rival's campaign, stating that 'Mississippi's heroes were knights'. Maxine defended herself by stating she hadn't specified any one group, insisting that the periodical was taken out of context "by a lying, stinking media that's only now digging this **** up, now that I'm running for Mississippians for the Third District." She also vehemently denied any allegations to the Ku Klux Klan and condemned their 'hateful messages and ideas'.
The controversy may have been small, but it did garner the attention of more local political operatives in alarm, forcing more money to shore up Maxine that might have been spent in other competitive districts. She made sure to make public a phone call that saw the local chapter of the KKK phone in her office to endorse her, only for her to forcibly and vehemently deny the chapter's endorsement. In the end, the money did go to good use, as Maxine won 53% of the vote against her Democratic opponent's 47%.
2016
The 2016 election was a tumultuous affair. The Democrats decided to go with a "blue dog" style Democrat that was able to appeal to the evangelical Christians of her district. Maxine tried again and again to tie her candidacy to the failed presidential bid of Sam Baginski, deriding him as a "crazy commie". She closely attempted to make the case that 'a vote not for me is a vote for communism', though throughout her House campaign polls saw her ahead of her opposition by at least 14 points. Come election night, those polls had a little bit of an oversampling of Republicans to Democrats within the District, but still granted her a generous win of 60% to 40%.
2018
In contrast to her spirited defense in 2016, the Democratic Party opted wisely to avoid throwing away a whole lot of money at this seat, but still put some-one up for the purpose of not letting her win unopposed. A former elementary school teacher ran against her on a mostly education focused platform, though failed to gain any real traction, leading to a wide 67% to 33% victory for Representative Maxine.
2020
In her 2020 re-election bid, the Democrats nominated a black opponent, to which Maxine made another series of damaging gaffes comparing her opponent as an 'ape' when it came to his proposals to do something about an 'issue that don't exist' (climate change). Still, in spite of promising Democratic internals that might have flipped the seat Blue, Richardson being at the top of the ticket and the increasing rarity of split-ticket voters throughout the country handed the incumbent Representative a resounding victory for a fourth house term with a margin of 65% to her opponent's 35%.
While in the U.S House, Maxine has worked hard for farmers and gun-owners. She readily adopted President Wolf's anti-immigration rhetoric whilst serving in the house, insisting that the "Mexicans were coming for good paying American jobs". In the wake of mass shootings, Maxine would be the first to offer 'thoughts and prayers' while simultaneously blasting Democrats for wanting to 'pass a new constitutional amendment that would strip away the 2nd'. Her voting record so far since her election in 2014 has been seen with an A by the NRA. She has also made it a point to defend Mississippi and her fellow Republicans House members from the heated criticism it's "Heartbeat ban" on abortion stirred up alongside her neighboring state of Alabama. She denies Global Warming is real, insisting it's a "fabrication by first the soviets, then the Russians, now the Chinese". She also refuses to refer to it as 'climate change', vowing that she would not be 'roped on in by the PC mobs".
However, she was also an opponent of the DACA bill, arguing that the ' illegal Mexicans would grow up to ruin American society'. She privately mused in her office about the 'fruitless-ness' of negotiating with Democrats, arguing that 'unless they were conservative like the ones I grew up with, there ain't no point in doin' none of that s**t'.
Other Info: Married to Miles Christiansen in 1981. Has one son named Norton (b. 1984), who currently works as a High School history teacher in Miami, Florida.
Currently assigned to the U.S House committees:
-Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies
-Livestock, Dairy, Poultry, Local Food Systems, and Food Safety and Security
-Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety
I have read and accept the rules of the roleplay: Newne Carriebean7
Do Not Remove: [size=30]DRAFT87421[/size=30]
1) Based on my calculations, plus the information provided in the other info section of the app, Durant's son wouldn't have been 18 and gone to college until 2002. Obviously this could be fixed by either having Norton born in 1982 or having Maxine enter the political arena in 2002 rather than 2000 as written in this version of the app.
