Northwestern West Virginia is Mountaineers for Progress territory. If you vote to screw 185,000 of us out of health care we take it very, very personally.
McKinley strikes out
David McKinley (WV-01) came to Fairmont on July 4th to help dedicate a riverside park, right off Alan Mollohan Drive. Maybe it should have occurred to him that Fairmont was former Congressman Mollohan’s home town, and maybe the folks that live there remember him fondly. Maybe it should have occurred to him that Fairmont is only a few miles south of Morgantown, where Mountaineers for Progress has been stirring up trouble at his office since his vote for Trumpcare. Maybe he should have made sure that there would be some supporters ready to cheer him on. Maybe he shouldn’t be such an arrogant asshole.
When the ceremony was announced a couple of days ago, we realized that we needed to be careful organizing resistance. The MfP Facebook page is monitored by the Republicans, so creating an event there would be tipping our hand. Instead we switched to email and got commitments from our group and the Fairmont-based Marion County for Progress to show up. We got a 6’ banner printed especially for the event- it is the white banner in the middle of the top picture.
I got there at 2 PM for the ceremony at 3. There were several hundred people listening to a patriotic band concert and I was disappointed that our protest would be lost in the crowd. Then the band finished and the crowd drifted away. By 3 there were only a few other people still hanging around. We had close to 20 people by then, but we had not joined up or pulled out our signs.
As the ceremony began we all moved to the area in front of the stage and brought out the signs. At that point there were 20 of us, 2 reporters, 1 McKinley staffer, and a couple of onlookers- that was the total audience. We didn’t try to disrupt the event (the park is very nice and the county commissioners had every right to be proud of it). But they went through the ceremony very quickly.
Afterwards there was a brief health care chant and Ace went up to talk to McKinley. Ace was one of a group who had met with him before the vote and who had been told that McKinley would never vote to cut Medicaid. McKinley’s response was that he had promised to “vote on the bill”, not vote against it. Of course Ace called him out on this and McKinley’s staffers quickly bundled him off. That left the reporters with no one to interview but Ace.
We were elated, but we had to get back to Morgantown. MfP was marching in the parade at 6:30.
Jenkins is tackled for a loss
We were lining up on the street at 6 in the parade staging area. Those of us who had been in Fairmont were regaling the others with stories and pictures of McKinley’s debacle. Then Shane said “That’s Evan Jenkins”. Jenkins represents WV-03, but he is challenging Joe Manchin for the Senate. He had decided that it was a good idea to come to Morgantown to kiss babies and ride in the parade.
I told people to hide their anti-Trumpcare signs, but it was too late. Jenkins was walking up the street working the crowd and when he got to us he tried to walk right by. But Shane and Ace followed him and eventually cornered him. Ace already had one congressional scalp that day and went for another.Several others went over and stood next to him with their signs. They took up ten minutes of his time and got it all on video.
We know that we are never going to sway either of these clowns. However, Senator Capito is still on record as opposing the Senate bill. She is lying low, but she will be noticing the unwelcome attention her colleagues in the House are attracting.
Finally, Joe Manchin has been solidly against all versions of Trumpcare since a series of town halls in March (including one sponsored by MfP in Morgantown). This should help keep his resolve firm.