While looking up stuff for an
earlier diary on the WV/KY filing deadlines upcoming, I found a news item at the HuntingtonNews.net website (a semi-alternative news website for my area):
Morgantown industrialist John Raese Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006 filed to run for the U.S. Senate, formally launching a much anticipated campaign in "Ronald Reagan's tradition of optimism" that he said would be "focused on providing new opportunities for West Virginia's future.
This makes the fifth declared candidate to try and unseat our man Byrd. But in a sec here, this guy Raese seems to have a bit more in the credentials department...
The others that had declared for this seat are largely unaccomplished at best, and complete nobodies at worst. The
Politics1.com list includes, before Raese, an ad agency owner running on a property rights ticket, an eye doctor who thinks Katrina was "God's wrath on an evil city", and two political also-rans in the previous election.
With Raese, however, the GOP puts forth someone with a bit more clout, although that clout has been sitting on a shelf for some time. At his previous height during the 1980s, he was head of the WV Republican Party and came quite close to achieving that rarest of rarities, winning a statewide election as a Republican NOT named Moore, in the 1984 Senate race that first put Jay Rockefeller in Washington (a meager--even for West Virginia--30,000 votes, acc. to a recent USA Today bio on JDR4). Still, I don't think we have too much to worry about. The HNN site had an op-ed piece heralding the dropping out of one of the aforementioned candidates (George Johnson, the property rights advocate--perhaps the sanest of the bunch!) as a sign that the WVGOP would rally behind Raese, but even if that were to happen, the winner of that primary would still be up against someone who's probably done more to shape this state than anybody this side of God himself.
(Some extra background is appreciated, if anyone could please supply some. As the name hints, I'm not exactly a native, and while I can say I've lived in WV this whole decade, that still means I was in Michigan for the other decade and a half-ish and missed all the fun.)