WV Pols/Politics

Two interesting state races.

Manchin v. Warner: do we need anyone whose family members have already disgraced themselves in public office? Why did Joe disband the election fraud unit – or did he? (see below)

[Another side note: I LOVE BugMeNot, a Mozilla accessory that lets you use existing login information for those ‘Free but you must register’ sites. Right click at their login page, and BugMeNot promptly supplies you with an amusing, working name and password.]

Statusquojoe.com has some disturbing but not too surprising material on Manchin.

Where’s Jesse Johnson in all this? Protesting because of exclusion from a debate in Charleston in October!

McGraw: Why, why must we suffer more than one person from any family in office at the same time? (there’s actually two McGraws running for office now, but I was referring to the McGraw Supreme Court race, which is quite ugly)

Note on the Election Fraud Investigation Unit: Found some published articles on this topic. Manchin made changes to the Election Fraud staff when he became Secretary of State in 2001. One thing he did was to fire the full-time investigator, though he apparently hired new staff as well. Certain parties believe the firing was politically motivated (the investigator was a Charlotte Pritt supporter–bad blood between Manchin & Pritt from gubernatorial primary in what, ’96?). At any rate, the Republicans are screaming about Manchin’s activities or lack thereof in the Logan–or is it Lincoln–no, wait, I think it’s Mingo–County fraud business, and they keep bringing up the firing of the fraud unit (unit=one guy?). So. Manchin replaced the ex-cop with a lawyer. That must be better, right?

One

Manchin Refutes Criticisms From Warners – – The Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register

And Another

Update: there are no others (not from news sources, anyway), that I can find. This “story” apparently comes straight out of the Warner campaign. I’d like to hear if anyone knows more.

However, Manchin doesn’t have a great record in the Election/Campaign ethics area, troubling if you are the Secretary of State. He had his name printed on voter registration materials late last year–by accident! GOP files ethics complaint against Manchin due to voter forms

Also there’s this: The Manchin cites clerical error for mislabeled campaign contribution

and this: Activist group complains about McGraw Though this complaint is related to McGraw stumping for Manchin, they should both know better.