While running for the Mississippi governorship in 1975, Charles Finch — better known to his constituents as Cliff — endeavored to establish himself as “the workingman’s candidate.” One day each week while on the campaign trail, he’d work alongside the state’s laborers: operating construction equipment, digging ditches, pumping fuel, pricing groceries and even installing a car engine.
To Finch’s credit, this wasn’t a complete political put-on. In the 13 years between his service in World War II as a howitzer gunner and his graduation from the University of Mississippi School of Law, Finch worked as a bulldozer driver, a log hauler, a campus police officer, a dragline operator and a cotton measurer, so he wasn’t exactly a stranger to manual labor.
