Who said off-year gubunatorial elections aren't hilarious?

For some dumb reason, Viriginia elects it's governor on the year AFTER each presidential election. So, that means that they're campaigning hard right now in the lead up to the November 8th vote. The Democratic candidate is the current Lieutenant Governor, Tim Kaine. The Republican is current state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. The race is a dead heat going into the last two weeks of the campaign.

None of this is, as of yet, hilarious.

However, by watching a few slices of the televised debates and some broadcasted publicity events, I've discovered something hilarious: Kilgore, the Republican candidate, has an EFFEMINANT Southern accent. I'm sure that everyone is familiar with the "effeminant Southerner." There's nothing inherently funny about this...although the fact that Kilgore is the candidate of the infinitely heterosexual Republican party is worth a chuckle or two. What's funny is that fact that, because of the noted anti-gay bias of your average knuckledragging Republican voter, Kilgore's campaign has used his actual voice and image extremely sparingly in their ads. The McCain-Feingold-mandated "I'm Jerry Kilgore and I approved this message" is the only time he actually speaks in any of his ads.

The question this raises is: did Kilgore realize on his own that he sounds kind of fruity and opted to keep his twangy lisp out of the public domain, OR, much more humorously, did one of Kilgore's campaign flunkies have to break the news to his boss that he sounds a bit too lavender for the cracker barrel of southern Virginia, and couldn't do his own spots?