| Some history
Until last year our district had been a reliable Democrat seat for four decades. The Mollohans, Bob and his son Alan, held the seat from 1969 until 2010. Last year Alan faced a primary challenge from Mike Oliverio, a former state senator and one of the most conservative Democrats in the state. Oliverio raised old corruption charges that Mollohan thought were debunked. Mollohan ignored Oliverio, which turned out to be a bad idea. Turnout was low in the primary, and the result wasn't even close. Oliverio won in a landslide.
With Mollohan gone and the Tea Party in full bloom, the congressional seat was in play. Both parties poured money into the race. The Republican, David McKinley, won by 1,440 votes.
2010 was not a banner year for Republicans in West Virginia. Joe Manchin easily moved over from Governor to take over the remainder of Robert Byrd's Senate term. Manchin carried the 1st District by a wide margin, even though the Republican candidate was from Morgantown. The Democrats kept a firm grip on both houses of the state legislature, the other statewide constitutional offices, and the state Supreme Court. In the other two congressional districts incumbents Nick Rahall (Democrat) and Shelley Capito (Republican) easily won. There is no doubt that if the base had been energized that McKinley would have lost, but Oliverio is despised by most union members, environmentalists, and Democratic party activists.
The District
The 1st District covers most of northern West Virginia. Most of the area is part of the Ohio Plateau and is more similar to eastern Ohio than the mountainous parts of West Virginia to the east and south. The river valleys have historically provided easy access to most counties and so the population has mixed with outsiders much more than in the mountains.
The population is older than most of the country. Since most of the coal mines, steel mills, and glass factories shut down industrial jobs have been scarce. Although it is geologically on a plateau, the rivers have cut the landscape up so that large scale farming is not an option. People are mostly middle class (it doesn't take much money to live well in West Virginia). We don't have the grinding poverty of the coal mining regions in the south part of the state, and we also don't have many ultra-rich. At times it seems like a 1950s sitcom come to life.
There is a liberal axis of college towns in the Monongahela River valley: Morgantown, Fairmont, and Clarksburg. These areas vote Democratic. There is a rust belt along the Ohio River that is more conservative, but strongly union (Oliverio lost the election in this area). The remainder of the district is rural and sparsely populated.
Alan Mollohan regularly got more than 60% of the vote. The district also votes Democratic for governor and senators. Bill Clinton won it and Hillary trounced Obama in the 2008 primary. That primary is instructive- most people (me, at least) could not see much difference in the positions of the two candidates but the images they projected were very different. Obama was eloquent, young, urban, and Harvard; while Hillary was practical, older, small town, and Arkansas. West Virginians like blue collar, populist candidates.
Why isn't anyone running in 2012?
With the Congressional seat in the hands of a novice Republican the Democratic nomination looked like an almost sure thing for an ambitious politician. (Oliverio should not be hard to brush aside. To go with his poor standing among activists, Oliverio had followed up what the establishment viewed as the minor sin of knocking off one of their buddies in the primary with the mortal sin of losing to a Republican in the general election.) Every gathering of Democrats in the District became a speculation party: would Mollohan come back? Would one of the state representatives or senators make a run? The new President of the Senate, Jeff Kessler? Natalie Tennant, the Secretary of State? The special election in the spring to replace Manchin as governor occupied the politicians, though, and no one showed any sign of running against Oliverio.
Sue Thorn
In the middle of the summer someone at a party suggested that Sue Thorn should run. This was ridiculous. Sue is a community organizer who has worked for churches and political organizations (she was the original coordinator for Organizing For America for the district) but she has never run for office. Community organizers don't make a lot of money, and she was not independently wealthy. The only things that she had going for her were that she is liked and respected by everyone she knows, she has a strong sense of justice, she is smart, she is eloquent, she works hard, and she can instantly connect with people. That may sound like the qualities of the perfect candidate, but we all know that money, connections, and name recognition are what are important in the real world.
Sue said "no" at the party, but people kept urging her to run and eventually she decided to try. Since then the movement has been spreading throughout the district. Former state senator Jon Blair Hunter, perhaps the most popular politician in the district, agreed to be her campaign treasurer. Harley Staggers, a former congressman (redistricted into WV-01), has endorsed her and begun a major fund raising campaign.
So does a woman raised in a working class family, who has never run for public office but is outraged by her growing realization that the system is rigged against people like her, have a chance to win election to Congress? Can common sense and decency defeat corporate money, political connections, and name recognition?
Take a look at Sue Thorn and let me know what you think.
Sue Thorn for Congress
Sue Thorn ActBlue page
You can also donate at her web page through Blue Utopia.
Update: Sue is having a campaign kickoff reception on Wednesday November 30 at 6:30 PM at the Ramada in Morgantown. Details are on her web site. |
