The WTF? Awards: State Democrats honor rightwing activist Kirkendoll

by: heath_harrison

Sat Nov 07, 2009 at 06:32:13 AM EST

At the West Virginia Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on Oct. 31, several leaders were honored as Outstanding Democrats of the Year.

County Outstanding Democrats of the Year included: Cabell, Deborah Chapman; Lincoln, Buster Stowers; (posthumously); Logan, Art Kirkendoll; Mason, Randell G. Mayes; Mingo, Ernest "Big Ern" Williams; Putnam, Mary Sue Woodson; and Wayne, Lacy Marcum.

Most of these folks probably received a well-deserved honor, but one name on the list sticks out like a sore thumb.

President of the Logan County Commission Art Kirkendoll is a hard-core backer of mountaintop removal, and is probably best-known for being on hand when an angry mob attacked Ken Hechler, Larry Gibson and a group commemorating the Battle of Blair Mountain near Madison.

On August 27, 1999, when Weekley, Gibson, and a dozen of their friends reenacted the Blair Mountain protest, a pro-mining mob drove 50 miles from Logan to assault them. Placards were ripped from their hands and destroyed. They were tripped, kicked, choked, spat upon, pelted with cans, eggs, and tomatoes, and informed that they would be killed if they didn't go "back to Charleston where they belonged."

Negotiating with the police and clearly the mob's "spokesman," according to Hechler, Gibson, and Weekley, was Art Kirkendoll, president of the Logan County Commission. Last January Governor Robert Wise hired Kirkendoll to  oversee economic development in the southern part of the state. "Wise's staff satisfied itself that Kirkendoll was not 'directly involved' in the pushing, shoving, bullying, and egg-throwing," wrote John McFerrin, West Virginia assistant attorney general, in The Charleston Gazette. "From this the governor concluded that while he might not want a thug on his staff, an assistant thug was acceptable." So it goes in coal country.

http://www.scottchurchdirect.c...

But maybe I'm being too adamant on ideological purity when it comes to determining what makes an "outstanding Democrat."

After all, what's a little violent mob between friends?

Sure, he may seem like the kind of county leader who spends a good deal of time looking for ways to "get them Duke boys," but he's with us on everything but MTR, right?

Well, not exactly.

Kirkendoll was one of the biggest organizers of the rightwing Don-a-pollute-za festival back in September.

Here he is championing the rally to the Logan Banner:

"Now more than ever, it is the time for working people and businesses to join together and speak up about the economic damage caused by an overreaching government," said Art Kirkendoll, president of the Logan County Commission, in a prepared statement. "The Friends of America rally is about standing up for our freedoms, our families and the American way of life."

Kirkendoll's idea of standing up for families and freedom is bizarre, to say the least.

Attacks on liberals and progressives at the rally ran the full range of rightwing nuttery and the usual demonization of environmentalists was present,

Ted Nugent was on hand to stir up a panic that Democrats were out to take way your guns, Hank Jr.was trying his best to spread a lie to the Charleston Daily Mail that Barack Obama did not win the popular vote and Lord Monckton couldn't stop throwing around "Hussein' while referring to the president.

Here's the FOX Conservative Opinion Channel's Sean Hannity phoning in his standard anti-Obama stump speech, laced with the expected and played-out references to Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers.

Maybe that bit of stupidity, brought to you by Art Kirkendoll, wasn't enough.

Let's not forget that the event was deliberately scheduled opposite the annual Labor Day Rally in Racine of the United Mine Workers, an organization that, unlike the pro-MTR crowd and their love of mechanization and downsizing, has actually worked to advance the interests of workers in the coal industry.

Promoters of Blankenship's rally were downright giddy at the chance to damage the Democrats' allies in organized labor.. In his post, "Friends of America One-up UMWA Labor Day Rally," former Blankenship operative Roman Stauffer claimed the Massey event could "spell doom" for organized labor's gathering.
http://www.wvared.com/?p=1935

You'll also recall how, during his failed 2006 efforts to buy the legislature through his 'And For the Sake of the Kids" campaign, Blankenship stated that he was seeking to create a Republican majority at the capitol.

One has to wonder why an "outstanding Democrat" like Kirkendoll would be among his biggest backers.

You'd be lucky to find any progressive or even moderately-liberal accomplishment in Kirkendoll's career. Instead, you get a solid record of promoting fringe-right figures, conservative talking points and efforts to damage the Democratic Party and unions in West Virginia at every chance.

It's bad enough that Democrats have to put up with rightwing infiltrators, but honoring them for their efforts to undermine the party and prevent a progressive agenda is just asinine.

Kirkendoll represents the absolute worst in politics, and the state party has tarnished its award by giving it to someone with so vile of a history.