Remembering when a baker turned away Joe Biden and received praise from conservatives
The Red Hen isn’t the first Virginia business to bake up controversy by rejecting a political figure’s business.
The owner of a cookie shop turned down the opportunity to serve Vice President Joe Biden in 2012 — and the right embraced him as their small business hero.
Chris McMurray and his wife Kelly had only been in a business a few months when Biden's advance team walked into their Radford bakery, Crumb and Get It, hoping the veep could stop in for some cookies and a photo opportunity while they were campaigning in the area, but McMurray turned down the offer.
He made the decision “because of conviction and principle,” the shop owner told CBS affiliate WDBJ 7 at the time. “I have a difference of opinion of the folks in that campaign, that’s what it was. Also, taking a stance for my faith, my faith in God.”
The bakery owner said he was particularly put off by remarks made by former President Obama: “Very simply, ‘you didn’t build that.’ Speaking on small businesses and entrepreneurs all across this country and actually last night my wife was up all night. No sleep, she’s worked a full 24 hours.”
Critics were quick to seize on Obama’s statement at the time while his supporters said the quote was taken out of context and being willfully misconstrued by his opponents.
McMurray said his exchange with Biden’s team was quick and respectful.
Following the rejection of Biden, Crumb and Get It received attention from local news crews as well as a steady stream of customers and telephone orders.
McMurray’s story was thrust into the national spotlight with the help of conservative news sites, blogs and the wide-reaching Drudge Report. It eventually caught the eye of Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s Vice Presidential nominee at the time, who requested that McMurray introduce him at rally in Roanoke a few weeks later.
“We are gathered here today to send a message to the Obama-Biden team that we did build it,” he told the crowds before recalling his decision to turn Biden away. “Nothing personal, but I just happened to disagree with the President and the vice president on a few things.”
Ryan gleefully took the stage and said: “He just gave my speech. I’m voting for that guy Chris.”
McMurray said he received an outpouring of support in the weeks after he opted against serving Biden. Crumb and Get It spawned two more shops, one in Fredericksburg and another in Lakeland, before later shutting its doors.
Just what exactly does the modern democrat party stand for today? Anything anti-Trump? That's all they have besides demanding the TAX CRUMBS BACK.....retro static GDP average of 2.8, welfare, the supporting of criminal activity, a legacy of corruption at the highest levels of the Federal Police forces...pussies on the war on terror. Just how will history remember these historical failures of an 8 year Obama Administration that gestated the disease known as the Trump Derangement Syndrome?
