Ask David Beasley what he brings to his position as executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, and he doesn’t hesitate.

“Energy,” he says. “Passion.”

“Titles will only take you so far. It’s the heart. I’ve heard it said that ‘Pharoah had the title, Moses had the testimony.’”

He repeats: “Pharoah had the title, Moses had the testimony.”

You almost begin to hear the cadence of a Southern evangelist. And then he begins to roll out the numbers:

“We’re feeding 115 million people a day. And I need to raise $1 million per hour 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Now, it’s almost $2 million to $24 million a day. If I can get it up to $36 million — ” He pauses. “We were raising $16 million a day when I started, assuming Trump was not going to zero out the budget.”

It was a daunting position to be in when Beasley took the position in March 2017, knowing he was not only executive director but chief fundraiser as well. President Trump had announced his intention to severely curtail U.N. funding, so Beasley went to work behind the scenes, making the case to Democrats and Republicans alike that it would be more cost-effective to fund hunger relief efforts than to deal with the much more expensive aftermath of mass migration, destabilization, war and conflict.

“I worked every angle, from senators and congressmen to family members and friends in the administration. Back door, front door, side door. I came in from every which way. I made the case and I talked common sense language.

“We doubled our money with the Trump administration.”

When we talked, Beasley was in a brief break between working on crises building in Yemen and Palestine and Ethiopia and Syria and North Korea and Venezuela and DRC, the Sahel, Afghanistan. “It’s percolating big time,” he says.

Beasley threw himself into his campaign, leaving Clemson on Thursday afternoons to drive to Bennettsville and Darlington. “I would miss my Monday classes, go to classes Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and go back,” says Beasley. “I think I got a 4.0 that semester.” He was clearly in his element.

“David was full of energy, full of enthusiasm,” says Jennings. “He knocked on doors all over this district. He would knock on somebody’s door, go into the kitchen, sit down and have a glass of iced tea with them. Usually when he came out of there, I would think he had that vote.”

The hard work paid off, and Beasley beat an entrenched incumbent in the primary. But Gary Byrd, who had come up short, didn’t accept the defeat at the ballot box.

“Back then,” says Jennings, “the Democratic Party’s executive committee was the final governing entity on primary election challenges. It consisted of political appointees from the 46 counties. Gary Byrd had been around a while. He loses, files a protest in Columbia with Democrats on the committee, and they were going to conduct a hearing.”

Beasley, with a flair for the dramatic, announced he would walk to Columbia for the hearing. It’s not just down the street. It’s a 95-mile walk.

“Nobody believed him, but he did,” Jennings continues. “That was the story on WIST and the news organizations — this young guy who has just beat an old incumbent for the House has walked to Columbia for the protest hearing. He prevailed at that hearing and turned 21 and was sworn into the House. That was a pretty cool story.”

Beasley’s election did necessitate leaving Clemson and transferring to the University of South Carolina. He says that even at that point, he was still planning to go to medical school — that is until he realized that medical school labs conflicted with the legislative session. The law school, however, was only a couple of blocks away, and he could work out his class schedule.

“I thought, ‘I’ll get a law degree and then come back later for med school.’”

Beasley became the youngest person at the time to serve in the S.C. House, then the youngest majority leader in the U.S. and the youngest chair of the education committee in the U.S.