WV-Gov: With 11 months to go before the GOP primary for West Virginia governor, former state Commerce Secretary Woody Thrasher is out with the first TV spot of the race, and it may also be the first political ad we’ve seen that unintentionally features some truly reckless driving. As our eagle-eyed community member Tyler Yeargain notes, at the 23-second mark, Thrasher’s ad shows two cars in two different lanes driving in the same direction—and on a mountain road, no less.
And as Yeargain points out, this isn’t a case of the director just inverting an image the way Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby did in this classic 2016 spot, where some amateur mirroring tried to make it look like the Republican was getting out of the driver’s seat when he’d really been on the passenger's side. (That ruse was given away by the part in Shelby’s hair, which is usually on the left side of his head but was suddenly on the right when he was exiting the car.)
The giveaways in Thrasher’s ad: The car in the left lane passes two road signs that are facing away from the driver, meaning that this car very much is going in the wrong direction. Ironically, the spot features a “FIX ROADS” caption during this moment. We’re not infrastructure experts, but we can think of one really easy way to make West Virginia’s roads safer.
However, the guy Thrasher is trying to unseat in next year’s GOP primary, Gov. Jim Justice, has had some issues behind the wheel himself. In 2014, a short time before Justice entered the race for governor (as a Democrat, at the time), he was pulled over for speeding by a police officer in Lewisburg and told he was going 14 miles over the limit. Justice, who was and remains the richest man in West Virginia, was recorded berating the officer. “It doesn’t matter what you think,” he ranted. “I am a long way from being, you know, too big for the law but you have got to be a total lunatic ... this is ridiculous ... you have got to be crazy.”
The video became public in 2015, and the Republican Governors Association didn’t hesitate to blast Justice for “[c]learly believing he is above the law.” The RGA concluded, “Police officers risk their lives everyday to do their job and West Virginia needs a governor who will respect their dedication and sacrifice, not attack them.” Justice went on to win the race, but the GOP was only too happy to wipe his driving record clean in 2017 when he became a Republican.
And oh yeah, what is Thrasher’s ad actually supposed to be about? The candidate stresses his business roots and declares that West Virginia’s problems “are too big for a part time governor.” That’s a very unsubtle reference to Justice, who was Thrasher’s boss for the first year of his term, whose own schedule shows him doing very little work. There is no word on the size of the buy.