Josh Marshall has a good write up and link to a WV news story on the candidates running for WV governor next year. It’s another dispiriting example of how lost WV has become over the years, and it is a flashing red light that egomaniac Joe Manchin was going to get his ass kicked if he ran for re-election.
Gubernatorial candidate Mac Warner: ‘The election was stolen, and it was stolen by the CIA’
And that is just for openers.
West Virginia’s chief elections officer, now a candidate for governor, has again said the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
“The election was stolen, and it was stolen by the CIA,” Secretary of State Mac Warner, a Republican, said Thursday night during a MetroNews debate for gubernatorial candidates.
Now, the news story tried to put Warner’s conspiracy theory and political extremism in “context” by stating the other candidates were not that bad.
You be the judge:
Businessman Chris Miller, son of Congresswoman Carol Miller, when asked if the election was stolen responded “possibly.” House Judiciary Chairman Moore Capito, son of U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, would only say that West Virginia elections were secure and would go no farther.
A fourth gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who did not attend the debate, signed West Virginia on to a 2020 federal lawsuit that sought to invalidate election results in Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed it for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution.
Emphasis is mine.
So one of the other candidates wanted to throw out the results from MI, GA, WI, and PA in a federal lawsuit. Another asshole said the election was “possibly” stolen, and the last worthless POS said only WV elections were secure.
As Marshall noted, nepotism is running amok in WV politics as well.
As for the man who ran the damn elections in WV in 2020, the craziness gets a whole lot worse:
‘Stop the Steal’
For Warner, who has served as West Virginia’s Secretary of State since 2017, the claim was a variation on a consistent public position of casting doubt on the presidential election.
Warner is now vying to become West Virginia’s chief executive, touting his long record in the U.S. Army and his two terms as the state’s chief elections officer. Polls have shown him running behind some of the other candidates, but he has picked up a key endorsement from the former president’s orbit and hopes for more.
Following the 2020 election, Warner participated in a March for Trump rally and appeared in the backdrop of Right Side Broadcasting coverage holding up a “Stop the Steal” sign. At that point, he questioned voting methods in some states.
That was after former President Donald Trump and his allies lost 62 lawsuits contesting election processes, vote counting and the vote certification process in states that included Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Most were dismissed because of lack of evidence.
Warner has also been endorsed by Mike Flynn.
There is an explanation of how the CIA supposedly stole the election from Trump, and it all has to do with Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s in the article, so go read it for yourself. I just cannot go there with that insanity.
As someone who lives in KY and sees WV and KY as two peas in a pod, I find this infuriating and depressing all at the same time. What were once Democratic leaning states with a streak of conservatism have now become political fetid swamps spreading election denialism and corruption like malaria. The rot you smell is the corpse of the state Democratic Parties, and the swarm of flies produced are the Republicans who feast on the corpse.
And as for all those people who lamented Joe Manchin’s announcement that he was retiring from the Senate, this latest embrace of election denialism convinces me that I was correct in my earlier prediction: there is no way that Manchin would have won re-election in 2024. Despite Manchin kicking Biden and the rest of us in the balls for the last two years, Manchin’s conservatism would not save his seat.
Which is another reason why I think Manchin’s positions wouldn’t sell on a No Labels ticket either. If the people in your home state have embraced Trumpism, how the hell are you going to convince others outside of your so called base of operations to vote for you? Manchin isn’t crazy enough for Republicans in WV to vote for him, and they are the majority of the voters now in WV.
There are still some good people in WV and KY, but we are not a majority by any means. If either state is ever to be turned around politically, it will take years and a lot of hard work. Unfortunately, the time is not now.