Today's candidates deserve respect from W.Va. voters
ALTHOUGH the candidates had their game faces on for the Daily Mail's editorial board, they were a road-weary lot.
ALTHOUGH the candidates had their game faces on for the Daily Mail's editorial board, they were a road-weary lot.
The primary election campaign to choose candidates for the Oct. 4 governor's race had been grueling.
The eight Republicans and six Democrats had already been all over the state meeting with newspaper editorial boards and attending sparsely attended "meet-the-candidate" events.
They knew what questions to expect, and they had their answers down pat. The meetings, first with Republicans and the next day with Democrats, produced few surprises.
Until, toward the end of the session, Managing Editor Brad McElhinny threw them a curve: He asked them essentially what they were like as kids and what led them to this moment.
What followed was amazing.
The candidates relaxed in their seats and told us stories we hadn't heard before. Jared Hunt captured them in two stories.
These are tremendously accomplished people, and almost all of them came from humble beginnings. They worked like dogs to become who they are.
They are lessons in human potential.
A sampling from the Republicans:
Ralph William Clark's family was so poor that his father was forever visiting junkyards to keep a rattletrap running. When Clark's third-grade teacher asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said "I want to own a junkyard."
Instead, he's taught at WVU for 40 years.
Mitch Carmichael's father worked at the Kaiser Aluminum plant in Ravenswood, and Carmichael grew up in a neighborhood where kids "didn't play too loud during the day because their dads might have been on midnight shift the night before."
State Sen. Clark Barnes' father was a traveling minister of a conservative political persuasion. When the younger Barnes admitted to being impressed by Nelson Rockefeller, his father "retrained" him so successfully that he became an enthusiastic campaigner for Goldwater.
Charleston's Betty Ireland, like many West Virginians, left the state to go to college, but just had to come back. Her four children live elsewhere now.
"Our kids are gone. They're scattering to the wind, and I would do anything to get them back here. But if I can't get them back here, then I want to do what I can to make things better for other people's kids so maybe they'll stay."
Morgantown businessman Bill Maloney - rig hand turned engineer turned business owner - found the effort to rescue the Chilean miners catalytic.
ALTHOUGH the candidates had their game faces on for the Daily Mail's editorial board, they were a road-weary lot.
The primary election campaign to choose candidates for the Oct. 4 governor's race had been grueling.
The eight Republicans and six Democrats had already been all over the state meeting with newspaper editorial boards and attending sparsely attended "meet-the-candidate" events.
They knew what questions to expect, and they had their answers down pat. The meetings, first with Republicans and the next day with Democrats, produced few surprises.
Until, toward the end of the session, Managing Editor Brad McElhinny threw them a curve: He asked them essentially what they were like as kids and what led them to this moment.
What followed was amazing.
The candidates relaxed in their seats and told us stories we hadn't heard before. Jared Hunt captured them in two stories.
These are tremendously accomplished people, and almost all of them came from humble beginnings. They worked like dogs to become who they are.
They are lessons in human potential.
A sampling from the Republicans:
Ralph William Clark's family was so poor that his father was forever visiting junkyards to keep a rattletrap running. When Clark's third-grade teacher asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said "I want to own a junkyard."
Instead, he's taught at WVU for 40 years.
Mitch Carmichael's father worked at the Kaiser Aluminum plant in Ravenswood, and Carmichael grew up in a neighborhood where kids "didn't play too loud during the day because their dads might have been on midnight shift the night before."
State Sen. Clark Barnes' father was a traveling minister of a conservative political persuasion. When the younger Barnes admitted to being impressed by Nelson Rockefeller, his father "retrained" him so successfully that he became an enthusiastic campaigner for Goldwater.
Charleston's Betty Ireland, like many West Virginians, left the state to go to college, but just had to come back. Her four children live elsewhere now.
"Our kids are gone. They're scattering to the wind, and I would do anything to get them back here. But if I can't get them back here, then I want to do what I can to make things better for other people's kids so maybe they'll stay."
Morgantown businessman Bill Maloney - rig hand turned engineer turned business owner - found the effort to rescue the Chilean miners catalytic.
"When you see something that in your heart you know is not right, you've got to do something about it," he said.
His children, too, live outside the state.
The Democrats are scrappers, too. Again, only a sampling:
House Speaker Rick Thompson, whose father was killed in a mine accident, was raised by his grandparents.
He went to Marshall for a year, ran out of money, worked a summer railroad job, served two years in the Army, and went back to finish Marshall and law school in four years.
Treasurer John Perdue grew up in humble circumstances in Dog Fork Hollow in Boone County. The trajectory of his life changed when a teacher recognized his brother Roger's potential and headed him toward college. That changed his siblings' lives, too.
Secretary of State Natalie is the youngest of seven children who grew up on a farm in Marion County. They all knew they had to pull their own weight.
She didn't get a graduation present. Graduation was expected of her.
Acting Senate President Jeff Kessler grew up among the coal miners and steelworkers of Marshall County listening to "the sound of the trains running and whistles blowing and the steel mills working and the people humming."
When he went to college, what he noticed was the quiet.
Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin remembers drawing water from a well and making trips "down the path" for certain functions.
A teacher at Chapmanville High School headed him into public service. Like some of the others, Tomblin was the first in his family to go to college.
All these people deserve respect. Agree or disagree with what they propose, do recognize that some people work a lot harder to make democracy work than others do.
I hope, next cycle, that more people make more effort to attend meet-the-candidate meetings.
The right question can make it more interesting than you expect.
Maurice is editorial page editor of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 348-4802 or ha...@dailymail.com.
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