In West Virginia’s Second Congressional District, the Democrat Nick Casey and Republican Alex Mooney have raised more than one million dollars each.
The money isn’t coming from you and me.
It’s coming from corporate law firms, oil and gas interests, the coal industry and other large corporate interests.
As a result, both Casey and Mooney favor mountaintop removal mining, favor fracking, are opposed to single payer national health insurance, and won’t touch the bloated, wasteful military budget.
Corporate money is corrupting that race.
It’s a mirror image at the state level, where big corporate interests are dumping a boatload of cash into both Democrat and Republican coffers.
Here in Morgan County we are blessed to have two choices who are independent of the corporate cash.
Brenda Hutchinson is running for House of Delegates in District 58 against the Republican corporate candidate Daryl Cowles. There is no Democrat in the race.
And former CBS and NBC newsman Ed Rabel is running for Congress.
Both Rabel and Hutchinson oppose mountaintop removal mining and fracking.
(No campaign cash to either of their campaigns from the coal industry or from oil and gas interests.)
Try this test.
Go up to a fellow voter and make a simple political statement.
Say something like — both parties are corrupt.
It’s like saying two plus two is four.
The voter will laugh and say something like — why are you telling me something that’s so obvious? (Usually in more colorful language, often without expletives deleted.)
To which there is an obvious answer — what are you going to do about it?