The Campaign So Far

We have a few weeks left in the campaign for Delegate in the 51st District. I've met lots of new people - the local activists, humanists, and Bernie Sanders supporters. I have a new Morgantown crowd.

 Before the campaign, the advice I got from political activists was "Don't run." I haven't raised a lot of money and  I didn't spend most of what friends have sent on the theory that if I win the primary, I will need cash to counter the corporate money the Republicans will have.

I've been living figuratively in the "South Park Bubble," the liberal, largely Jewish, activist neighborhood of big old houses and brick streets south of downtown and walking distance to West Virginia University's Downtown Campus.

I attended a Democratic chicken lunch, cooked by volunteers, in a church auditorium in Granville, an industrial town just across the Mon river from Morgantown. I was in a suit, because I was at a bar mitzvah at Tree of Life earlier.  All of us candidates spoke (we were only supposed to introduce ourselves). The people, coal miners and blue collar workers, mostly older and, with very few exceptions, American-born Caucasians. were in T-shirts and jeans. One of the other candidates said he wouldn't show up in a suit for an event like this one. A speaker for Jim Justice, who switched parties to run for Governor as a Democrat, and is the wealthiest man in West Virginia, pointed out that his candidate was not an "Obama Democrat." I felt out of place.

I spoke this week at "Mountaineers For Progress." They had a forum for candidates with questions the moderator was to ask us. We had two minutes to answer. Eight of us showed up- seven of the eight Democratic candidates and one Republican, a WVU student. We had the questions in advance. I didn't write anything down, but I knew what I wanted to say. That event went well. We stuck to issues (except for a two-minute introduction). Most of us Democrats were on the same page and the forty people in the audience were receptive.

Yesterday there was an "after hours" meeting at a local law office, sponsored by The Morgantown Chamber of Commerce. I had my regulation blue blazer on. There was food: shrimp things, beef on little crusty pieces of bread and "firecracker chicken meatballs." I stuck to fruit and vegetables and one cookie. The men at this event were in suits; the women were well-coiffed and with designer purses, in dresses and heels. Nothing at all like the Democratic lunch Saturday. Candidates were specifically invited. The judge candidates (whose positions will be decided in the primary) were all there. I got the impression that most of the people were avoiding me, but then I saw that the other candidates were also shunned. We spoke to each other, and I met a young woman and man who work for Sprint, out of place in Sprint uniform shirts and jeans. The Sprint woman was the only African-American in the room.

Someone told me he couldn't vote for me in the primary because he is a Republican. A pretty young woman who is finishing law school talked about working on Republican Shelley Moore Capito's Senate campaign. I met the contractor building Ruby Memorial Hospital's new children's wing. He said he lives in Nashville. We local Democrats didn't have much of a constituency in the room.

I've been invited to the Democratic Women's Lunch this Saturday. I told them I couldn't come because it is the first day of Passover. They said I could just introduce myself and not stay for lunch. The person involved was nice about it, so I said I might go. I probably won't. I'm way overtired, and my sister Robin will be here. Better to acknowledge the holiday and take the day off and spend it with family. We have a temple seder Friday night, and we are going to a home seder with friends Saturday night.  I have to set a line for myself and say "It is important to me not to campaign on this holiday."

I finally got signs for my campaign. There are probably ten or fifteen of them out - six in South Park, two on our street and the rest scattered around among the Bernie Sanders people, who have endorsed me.

In today's Dominion-Post, our local newspaper, the West Virginia Business and Industry Council listed its endorsements. They endorsed the three Republican incumbents in our District. No one I know understands how these people got elected: they are anti-choice, anti-union, anti-gay, and anti-environment. They countered pleas from law enforcement and passed a  bill allowing anyone over twenty-one to carry a concealed weapon with no permit. Of course, the Council wants to make sure there are no regulations on auto dealers, nursing homes, and polluters. That's where their money ( and a lot of it) for the Republican incumbents comes from.

The Bernie people feel that Hillary stole New York from Bernie, but really, it's just the way the game is played. It's actually worse in West Virginia. My fellow Democrats who think they will win against the Republicans because "I'm an eleventh generation West Virginian and my father was a coal miner" or "I'm a father and husband and small business owner," well, they are as delusional as I am. I think I can win by standing up for abortion rights, gay rights, cultural, racial and religious diversity, the environment, and labor against management. None of us really understands what we are up against.

Our house with my sign

At the Brooklyn debate Watch Party

Democratic Party Chicken Lunchlast wek - 7 of the 8 Democrats running for Delegate in our District

At the opening of the Bernie Sanders For President office in Morgantown

Letters

An article appeared in our local paper about two weeks ago about how happy The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce and The Business and Industry Council are with the Republican Party. These groups are trying to make it harder to sue negligent business owners, to change the election laws to find judges more amenable to business interests, overturn environmental rules, lower business taxes, make West Virginia a right-to-work state to help destroy labor unions, and advance charter schools in the state, again to shut out unions. Of course, I was livid. Here's the letter I wrote, which was published Sunday, December 13 in the Morgantown Dominion Post.

It's always good to know who your friends are. The West Virginia Business and Industry Council and The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce know that their friends are in the Republican Party.
For the rest of us, if the Republicans continue to rule, they will reduce taxes on businesses, make it harder to sue an employer or merchant, reduce wages for working people, and cut out more health and safety regulations in the mines. West Virginia University will lose more funding, and fewer local students will enroll because of rising tuition. Public schools will suffer, and more miners will die in accidents. Meanwhile, CEO pay will continue to rise. The Republicans say their plan will help the economy. Actually, it will make the very rich even richer, and everyone else poorer.

In 2014, the Republicans promised to fix the roads and improve the economy. Instead, they have made things worse, and promise more of the same if they are reelected in 2016.

I reedited this letter to make it clearer, so this is not exactly what was published in the paper.

Today, there were two awful letters in the paper. I could blame it on the age of the letter writers, but at sixty-six, I can't complain about old men who have nothing to do but write letters to the editor.

Both letter writers appear frequently in the paper. Riley Thomas, who is 76 according to an internet search, complains about President Obama not saying "Radical Islamic terrorism." According to an article on Politifact, President Obama has said "ISIL is not Islam." He does not want to equate Islam to terrorists. Thomas' point is something used to conflate terrorists and Islam. He also states:

 "Other mass shootings have their roots in mental illness and out-of-control criminal activities. Government needs to address the root causes of these atrocities and affect a solution, not make excuses for its inability to fix the problem." Would that a Republican government would actually allocate money for mental health issues. Of course, he doesn't mention the "terrorists" who claim to be "Christians" or "Patriots" or "Defenders of the White Race."

He ends by saying:

"To me, gun control is a good grip, a steady aim and a smooth trigger pull. Not depriving someone of their constitutional right to defend themselves."

Or their right to own as many weapons as they can afford, so that they can gun down their enemies. That's what I hear. These are false talking points from the Republican Party and the NRA. What happened to "A well-regulated militia.."? Ignore terrorism by so-called Christians, but demonize all of Islam. And don't ever mention that it is way too easy for people to get guns.

The other writer, Dan Carnegie, age 65, according to the internet, opens by discussing a college class he attended where the instructor was upset about the killing of four students at Kent State University in Ohio, on May 4, 1970. Carnegie says "As a Vietnam veteran, I was very understanding of the guard (sic) . Protests have a way of turning violent. They should have been in class." He goes on from there to defend the policeman in Chicago who shot Laquan McDonald. He says "No, I don't agree with shooting someone 16 times. But when you invite the police to respond- you must take responsibility for what is to come."

"No" and "No." I was a junior in college on May 4, 1970, and we shut down our school. The protests at Johns Hopkins were peaceful, as were the protests at The University of Maryland, where the National Guard was also called in. With all the talk of the Second Amendment, where is the talk about the First Amendment right to peacefully protest against blatantly illegal actions by the Nixon administration, waging war in Cambodia, which was expressly forbidden by Congress? And why are the police, who are supposed to catch perpetrators of crimes, allowed to execute people without a trial? And lie about it.

The Dominion-Post states that they will only publish one letter per month from each writer. Otherwise, I would have been on these guys today. If you want to send a letter, then write to opinion@dominionpost.com. I don't have a subscription to the paper, so I can't access their on-line edition to show the full text of the letters I've quoted.

In my election campaign, I would love to be able to make people like this see things a different way. What I may be able to accomplish is to represent people who see things through a lens of compassion, what the Constitution really says, and an understanding of history and where our state and country need to go. People like us are not well-served by most of those in political office here in West Virginia.