Ben Jones, known to millions as the country boy mechanic Cooter Davenport in the 1980s television series The Dukes of Hazzard, died on Aug. 9.
His wife said on social media that Jones suffered a heart attack in his home in Washington, Virginia, while waiting to watch an Atlanta Braves baseball game. They were his favorite team. He was 84.
Before Jones would turn his acting career into a political one, he was “Crazy Cooter” Davenport, his CB handle for all seven seasons of the series that ran from 1979 to 1985. (“Breaker one, breaker one. I might be crazy but I ain’t dumb. Crazy Cooter coming at you,” was the character’s famous refrain.)
A constant companion and accomplice to the Duke Boys, Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat), in fictional Hazzard County, Georgia, Cooter would try to help the family do good while navigating the corrupt Mayor Boss Hogg and his band of clumsy cops. Ever resourceful, it was often Davenport who was getting Bo and Luke out of a jam.
Jones’s character made a big impression on a then-youthful American Generation X in the show’s first run and also on generations beyond when it went into syndication.
The hourlong, primetime, Southern-friendly CBS show originally surprised many industry experts when it became a pop culture phenomenon averaging about 40 million viewers on Friday nights. “It’s become a permanent part of Americana, like Mickey Mouse or I Love Lucy,” Jones would tell Fox News in January 2024.
Born in North Carolina and raised in Portsmouth, Virginia, Jones’s Georgia connection went beyond Hazzard and baseball — he was elected to Congress in 1988 as a Democrat serving Georgia’s 4th District near Atlanta and was reelected in 1990. After being redistricted out, he ran against future House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1994 but was defeated in what would become a banner year for the GOP.
Jones used his Cooter persona in his campaigns, running as a centrist, populist Democrat.
Central to the Dukes and Jones’ own Southern heritage was the controversial Confederate battle flag, which adorned the top of the General Lee, a 1969 Dodge Charger, that was basically its own character, a symbol he defended throughout his life. “I’m a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I’m also a life member of the NAACP,” Jones, who in his younger years had also been part of the civil rights movement, said in 2020.
“And then you see a Ku Klux Klansman waving a rebel flag and he likely has no teeth and no sense and they’re pathetic people,” Jones also noted. “They’re sad people, and they p*** me off. And so yeah, they are desecrating a flag that my people died under.”
“Our show is the sweetest, harmless, colorblind, good guys always win, nobody gets hurt,” he said of the flag’s appearance on the TV program. “And it had a huge black audience.”
Jones published a biography in 2008 titled Redneck Boy in the Promised Land: The Confessions of ‘Crazy Cooter’ about his personal life, his experiences on the show, and in Congress.
The actor and politician always seemed to relish his character, becoming somewhat of an unofficial ambassador of the Dukes’ brand until the end, opening three “Cooter’s” country stores near his home in Virginia and also in Nashville and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Fans could purchase memorabilia or even get to experience one of the many General Lee cars used in the series.
“The Dukes of Hazzard lost another integral part of their cast today,” Wopat of Luke Duke fame posted on his Instagram of Jones’ passing. “Ben Jones was a fine friend and a fierce advocate of all the best things we can offer in the entertainment business.”
“He will be sorely missed,” Wopat added.
By more people than is probably measurable. The news of Jones’s passing led some on social media to lament that part of their childhood had died along with him.
Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), the Republican nominee to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), paid tribute on X, writing, “As an 80’s kid, Congressman Ben Jones will always be ‘Cooter’ to me.”
To this ’80s kid writer and, no doubt, countless others, too.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).