Colorist

Lance Mitchell is an interesting character. He's a hair colorist by trade, who lives with his wife in a fairly typical suburban apartment complex just outside Washington, D.C. He has tattoos on both arms and rings in both ears. He enjoys bicycling, and exploring caves, and says he was raised by Druids, practitioners of an ancient Celtic religion that emphasizes the connection between humans and other animals. That upbringing is one of the reasons Lance Mitchell feels so passionately about his snakes, one-meter and three-meter-long pythons, Georgie and Bert, and his two-meter-long boa constrictor, Medusa.

Political colorists can be promiscuous in calling states purple, but my state is true to that hue. I speak of North Carolina, and I have receipts: While our junior senator, Ted Budd, is a Republican who won election to a first term in 2022 by about three percentage points, our governor, Roy Cooper, is a Democrat who won election to a second term in 2020 by more than four.