{"id":2263,"date":"2016-04-27T13:46:48","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T17:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2263"},"modified":"2016-04-27T14:38:03","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T18:38:03","slug":"2263","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2263","title":{"rendered":"Ken Reed on Running for Congress, Wal-Mart and the Natural Gas Line"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Reed is the owner of five Reed Pharmacy stores in Berkeley Springs, Hancock, Hedgesville, Spring Mills, and Berryville. He also owns Top Shelf Liquor in Berkeley Springs.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qh0mm5MMxN8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Reed is running as a Republican for Morgan County Commission against Darren Barney and Jimmy Stewart.<\/p>\n<p>Reed spent $500,000 of his own money on an unsuccessful race for Congress in 2014. He came in second in a seven person Republican primary. Reed announced his intention to run again for Congress in 2016, but pulled out after another Republican challenger from the eastern panhandle &#8212; Marc Savitt &#8212; entered the race.<\/p>\n<p>Why did he then decide to run for County Commissioner?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy wife asked me a couple of times if I would be interested,\u201d Reed said. \u201cSome people in the county had asked me to do it. I\u2019m like &#8212; I don\u2019t know if I really need to do that. But the more I thought about it, I think I would do an excellent job at this particular post. It\u2019s basically what I do now. It\u2019s 80 percent budgeting. The rest of it is maintenance, and buildings and appointing board members. That\u2019s the majority of it. You have to make sure you get that right.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Politics doesn\u2019t enter into it?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo. I\u2019m doing this for the county. And I\u2019ve pretty much kept this to myself &#8212; I feel like I owe this county. The 2014 run was brutal. Politics at that level is a brutal thing. Things could get pretty nasty in a hurry. And this county wrapped their arms around our kids and sheltered them a lot from the stuff that was going on out there.  They protected our kids pretty well. There were telephone calls and stuff like that. The people of this county stepped up and sheltered them from the silliness that goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUltimately, it\u2019s up to the voters of this county. I am offering my services to this county. Right now the county deals with a $5.3 million budget and 80 some employees. At one time, I had over 100 employees. This is not something I am not capable of doing. I\u2019ve been doing it for twenty years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Reed said the number one economic development priority is the proposed gas line for Morgan County. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy biggest fear is that they are just going to take that pipe through Morgan County and not let us use it and just let Berkeley County use all the natural gas,\u201d Reed said. \u201cWe need a feeder station here. Natural gas is a cheap alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the question of big box stores, Reed said that \u201call business should be welcomed and looked at.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Reed said he was against \u201cputting a blockade up\u201d and saying to business &#8212; \u201cyou can\u2019t come here.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou have to keep what you are doing well and sensibly bring in other businesses that will either complement it or work in a different sector all together,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Reed said he agreed that big box stores drive out small businesses. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut it\u2019s not Wal-Mart, it\u2019s government,\u201d Reed said. \u201cThese contracts in the pharmacy world have gotten so bad that it is driving everything vertical. You have to have 20,000 stores to even get into those contracts. It\u2019s not the competition. If I could put a store in a Wal-Mart parking lot, I would do it every time. Because I could out service them, I could out hustle them, I can give a better quality product. But that\u2019s not what is important now. It\u2019s all cost driven. And that is extremely hard to compete with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>How would Reed describe his politics?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was an independent for twenty years,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t like partisan politics. I don\u2019t like the nastiness that occurs on the fringes. When I ran for office, I ran head on into some of that. When you are in health care, my job is to help you. When you are in politics, it\u2019s like flipping 180 degrees. You are fighting so much silliness out there because it\u2019s about control. It took me a long time to wrap my head around it. There are whole industries that are built up around dividing people. We do better when we unite than divide.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ken Reed is the owner of five Reed Pharmacy stores in Berkeley Springs, Hancock, Hedgesville, Spring Mills, and Berryville. He also owns Top Shelf Liquor in Berkeley Springs. Reed is running as a Republican for Morgan County Commission against Darren &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2263\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2263"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2271,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2263\/revisions\/2271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}