Hey, John Raese, here's some free advice: if you're running for U.S. Senate in West Virginia, don't get in a fight with your neighbors over plans to expand your mansion in Florida. Especially if the dispute involves whether you can replace a massive outdoor dollhouse with an even larger glass conservatory. Ben Smith:
Raese, whose lavish Florida home has been a favorite Democratic target, has applied to the board for permission to replace a giant six-foot by eight-foot dollhouse and replace it with a new fourteen-foot by fifteen-foot "glass conservatory."
The application by Raese's wife, Elizabeth, has been a matter of some local controversy since last year, when the Commission turned down a larger version of the project, and a neighbor, Elizabeth Marshall, offered emotional testimony against it at a hearing this August 25 (at 2:34 here), calling the Raeses "abusive" in destroying the "privacy and the intimacy" of her property, and complained both of "retribution" and of having spent $35,000 fighting it.
Holy smokes! $35,000....just to fight the permit? That's about the same as the median household income in West Virginia. It must be some sort of high-falutin' neighborhood that Raese lives in there. The kind with marble driveways. And did I mention it's in Florida?