Election 2016 - WVPB Story Archives - Page 4 of 5 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Spending in 2004 Race Pushes Benjamin to Use Public Financing

Brent Benjamin was first elected to the West Virginia Supreme Court in 2004 during a race that became known for the influence of outside spending.

At the time, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship funneled big bucks into the race attacking Benjamin’s opponent, incumbent Justice Warren McGraw, and now Benjamin, the conservative lawyer turned centrist judge, is attempting to move past his former political ties in 2016’s nonpartisan race.

“In 2004, we saw the effect of independent groups out there, independent of the candidates spending lots of money,” Benjamin said when asked about the Blankenship backed attack ads.

“Candidates didn’t have any control over that, neither myself nor Warren McGraw, and it dwarfed the message that the candidates could get out,” he said. “That’s not a good thing.”

That outside spending is a big reason Benjamin said he chose to participate in the state’s public campaign financing system, available only to Supreme Court candidates.

“It is the single best way to help the public, or reassure the public that there are no undo influences from anybody outside the state or any PACs or groups out there that have agendas in the court system,” Benjamin said of the program.

He and fellow candidate Bill Wooten are the only two of five candidates for the high court that chose to participate in the program this year, and both faced a legal challenge by opponent Beth Walker before receiving the funds.

In a lawsuit, Walker claimed both candidates missed filing deadlines and should be disqualified from the program, despite a State Election Commission decision in their favor. The West Virginia Supreme Court, made up of a panel of appointed circuit court judges, ruled in Benjamin and Wooten’s favor, giving them $500,000 each to fund their campaigns.

Still, Benjamin’s opponents have openly criticized him for his use of the public funds during a tough financial time for the state.

“First of all, that’s a policy decision and if you’re going to be a judge you should leave the policy decisions to the Legislature,” Benjamin said of the program itself. “The Legislature listened to the people and the people told them, this is the program we want. It’s that important.”

Benjamin also said the funds are not taken from the general revenue budget, but come from special accounts specifically created for the purpose of the program.

Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin participated on a 2015 panel discussing the state’s substance abuse epidemic.

But in 2016, the cycle of high levels of outside spending seen in previous years is repeating itself. The latest campaign finance filings show independent groups have spent $1.8 million on the Supreme Court race in West Virginia, some $200,000 more than the five candidates themselves.

To overcome these outsider political messages, Benjamin is relying on his work with the state’s drug courts, diversionary programs that help addicts get treatment instead of going to prison.

Benjamin has played a major role in the creation of adult, juvenile and veteran court systems. So far, he said 1,400 West Virginians have graduated from the programs.

“Every statistic is a human being in West Virginia and we have found that the drug problem affects every level of our society and it’s really hurting our state,” he said. “These are people who are being moms and dads again, they’re being sons and daughters again and that’s such a wonderful statistic and I’m just so pleased I’ve been able to be a part of that.”

This year, judicial officer, including Supreme Court candidates, are being elected on a nonpartisan basis for the first time. This is also the first time judges will be elected during the May 10 primary.

Trump, Sanders Announce Thursday Stops in West Virginia

Coming off of big wins in Indiana's primary Tuesday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders announced…

Coming off of big wins in Indiana’s primary Tuesday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders announced scheduled stops in West Virginia.

Both candidates will visit the state Thursday.

A press release from the Trump campaign said he will hold a rally at the Charleston Civic Center Thursday evening at 7 p.m.

Sanders begins his campaign tour of the state with a stop at the Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank near Kimball in McDowell County at 11 a.m. to discuss rural poverty.

Sanders will then travel to Charleston for a 3 p.m. rally at the South Charleston Community Center and ends the day Thursday evening at 7 p.m. with a second rally at the Waterfront Hotel in Morgantown.

The announcements came the same day a new poll by the national group Public Policy Polling placed both Trump and Sanders ahead of their respective rivals in West Virginia.

According to the poll, Trump leads the state at 61 percent over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

Sanders leads former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at 45 percent to her 37.

On Monday evening, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was met by Trump supporters in Williamson protesting her trip to the coal community.

More than 6,000 people attended a rally for Democrat Bernie Sanders in Huntington last week. Sanders is also expected to return to West Virginia Thursday.

Trump, Sanders, Justice Showing Leads in Recent Poll

A recent poll shows Donald Trump has a commanding lead in the republican primary and Bernie Sanders is edging out Hillary Clinton in the democratic race in West Virginia. Democrat Jim Justice is showing a lead in the primary and general election race for West Virginia governor.

According to a Tuesday news release from Public Policy Polling, billionaire Trump leads the state with 61 percent. Sen. Ted Cruz has 22 percent and Ohio Governor John Kasich is trailing with 14 percent.

“It’s hard to find better Trump territory than West Virginia,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling, in the release. “He’s by far and away the strongest candidate both among Republican voters and among the general electorate. It will be hard to find many places where he has an overall positive favorability rating but West Virginia is one of them.”

Sanders is favored with 45 percent over Clinton’s 37 percent. Both Sanders and Clinton have made recent campaign stops in West Virginia. Sanders’ campaign announced Tuesday he will return to the state later this week ahead of the May 10 primary.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and billionaire businessman Jim Justice is showing leads in both the primary and general election, according to a recent poll.

Businessman Jim Justice is leading with 37 percent of the primary vote over current former U.S. Attorney Booth Goodin’s 23 percent and state Senate Minority Leader Jeff Kessler’s 19 percent in the democratic primary.

Justice also leads unopposed republican candidate Bill Cole 41-35 for the general election, according to the poll.

“West Virginia gets tougher and tougher for Democrats when it comes to federal races,” said Debnam. “But in Jim Justice, Democrats have found a candidate who looks like he might be strong enough to at least keep the Governor’s office in their hands.”

Public Policy Polling says they surveyed 1,201 West Virginia voters, including 637 likely Democratic primary voters and 549 likely Republican primary voters between April 29 and May 1.

The polling organization says the margin of error is +/-2.8% overall, +/-3.9% for the Democrats and +/- 4.2% for the Republicans.

Eighty percent of participants, selected through a list-based sample, responded via the phone, while 20percent of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet panel.

Editor’s Note: For more election coverage leading up to West Virginia’s May 10 primary, visit elections.wvpublic.org.

First-Time Candidate, King Runs for W.Va. Supreme Court

Wayne King is an attorney from Clay County and one of five candidates running for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals. King is known for being outspoken on many issues, but perhaps most for his opposition to public campaign financing.

Wayne King grew up in Belle, West Virginia, but has lived in Clay for the last 45 years. At age 71, he’s still working as a full-time attorney since graduating from West Virginia University College of Law in 1971. Now, he’s running for the West Virginia Supreme Court. King says he’s been contemplating a run for the last twelve years.

“I noted more of a sense of arrogance in the judiciary,” King said, “and I believe that, in discussing with my wife, I decided that I would try to tell my story being a down at home, commonsense, country lawyer and run for the Supreme Court.”

A first-time candidate who has only raised around $200 in donations, King says those things haven’t stopped him from trying.

“It’s better to try to do something and give it your best shot, then wake up five years from now and say, why didn’t I do it?”

King has been a prosecuting attorney and a family law master and has a practice currently focused on court appointed work, which he says gives him a wide range of experience.

“It gives me a chance to be in court and be on my feet all the time, and it’s a challenge to think and go head-to-head with the best lawyers in West Virginia and also to try to match wits with very intelligence and well-trained judges,” he said.

Much of King’s time is spent representing children in abuse or neglect cases. He says this work is important to him, because he’s an advocate for children and it’s an area his family is involved in on a personal level.

“There’s hundreds and thousands of kids in West Virginia that need stability in their home life,” King noted, “and course, my daughter was a foster parent out in California for some ten years, and actually fostered about fifteen children until she finally was able to adopt a young baby named Tabitha, that’s our granddaughter, and so just seeing the opportunity to help not only children, but also represent fathers and mothers in those cases certainly is challenging.”

King has often cited the fact that he’s received more ethics complaints than all his opponents combined. But King says that’s a strength – it means when it comes to defending his client or being a prosecutor, he won’t back off.

“I’m the lawyer you want to take into court with you, because I’ll give it my best shot,” he said, “Sometimes people don’t like that. I do have ethics complaints, I’m not afraid to hide ‘em. I was censored once and suspended once, but I think they were wrong.”

This year’s Supreme Court race for the first time is non-partisan. King says it’s not a bad idea but needs tweaking because the state could end up with a Justice who received less than 50 percent of the vote.

“That’s just not right,” King explained, “A justice to the Supreme Court should be elected by at least a majority of the people, and if no one gets the majority in the primary, the top two should run off. In addition, if we’re going to start public financing and non-partisan things, then possibly Supreme Court justices should only be able to serve one term.”

The candidate has also been outspoken on his stance against the public campaign financing system. Two of King’s opponents are running their campaign on public dollars.

“I just think it’s an embarrassment to ask the average citizens of West Virginia in these tough economic times to take on that burden,” he said, “I also have said that I would not, when elected, during the twelve years that I serve, turn in any vouchers for costs. I think that I can pay my own way as justice of the Supreme Court and not accept any reimbursement for any expenses I incur.”

King has loaned around $13,000 of his own money to his campaign. He says he thinks voters will favor him over the other candidates because he’s real.

“I feel that if people listen to me and meet me one-on-one, my friends tell people how I practice law and my background and how I treat people fairly,” King explained, “and easy to get along with outside the courtroom, not necessarily inside the courtroom, but just I feel that once those ideas and those thoughts go up and down the hollers here in West Virginia, the streets of the cities, and everything else that my name will be well-known, and I think I have a lot of friends anyway across the state of West Virginia, and we’ll just see what turns out.”

This year, West Virginia voters have only one chance to vote for a Supreme Court Justice and all other judicial officers and that’s during the state’s primary election. Early voting is underway and Primary Day is May 10.

Protesters Outnumber Supporters at Clinton Williamson Event

While former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton preached a message of friendship and promised progress for southern West Virginia inside a campaign event in downtown Williamson Monday, dozens of protestors filled the streets outside chanting messages that made it clear Clinton was not welcome in their community.

“Hillary is a crook!” one man chanted just feet from the event’s entrance. Others yelled loudly, “Remember Benghazi!”

Not everyone who stood outside the rally was against the Clinton visit, though. Timothy Hatcher is a lifelong Williamson resident who held his “Hillary for President”sign proudly.

“People are taking her the wrong way. She has done nothing but great things,” he said. “A lot of people think you can change things in four years — it’s impossible. It takes time for one person to [change] the whole nation.”

Timothy Hatcher of Williamson proudly displays his Clinton sign outside the Monday event.

“It’s about clean coal,” Hatcher said. “I’m sure she will help the coal miners here in West Virginia.”

Clinton shared that same message with the small group that participated in her roundtable at the Williamson Health and Wellness Center, calling herself a friend of the state.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I’ll wave a magic wand and make something happen, but I will work my heart out for you. I will do everything I possibly can to support what is the character of West Virginia, the people of this state,” Clinton said.

Clinton repeatedly referred to a plan she released last summer that would invest $30 billion in coal communities for education, among other things. Bo Copley is a member of the panel who was recently laid off from his job as a maintenance planner at an Arch Coal subsidiary. He told Clinton her recent comments about the coal industry were at conflict with her new message of friendship.

“I just want to know how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of jobs and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend,” Copley told Clinton, “because those people out there don’t see you as a friend.”

Clinton made the comment at a town hall in Ohio earlier this year, but defended herself Monday, saying the comments were taken out of context and she had repeatedly apologized for them.

Protesters outside Monday’s Hillary Clinton event in Williamson.

Still, those misstatements, as she referred to them, continued to resonate with protestors outside like Emma Runyon. She’s a Williamson native who volunteered on the 2008 Clinton campaign and has since switched her party registration to Republican.

Runyon stood outside the Williamson Wellness Center wearing a Donald Trump hat and T-shirt, waving a Trump sign.

“This very time I was phone banking for Hillary Clinton in 2008,” Runyon said. “She changed every position from 2008 to now. She slowly went so far away from working people.”

Runyon added Clinton also promotes the “War on Coal,” a sentiment that helped Republicans take over the state Legislature during the 2014 election.

Clinton will make an additional stop in West Virginia this week, holding a roundtable discussion in Charleston on Tuesday focused on substance abuse.

The event is the same day that two states, Indiana and Tennessee, head to the polls to cast ballots in their primary elections.

West Virginia’s primary is May 10.

Editor’s Note: For more on election coverage leading up to West Virginia’s May 10 primary, visit elections.wvpublic.org.

Afer 32 Years of Service, McGraw Wants 12 More on High Court

Of all five of the candidates running for Supreme Court, only two have judicial experience. Current Justice Brent Benjamin is hoping to be re-elected to his seat, and Darrell McGraw, a member of the high court from 1976 to 1988, is trying to take it from him.

“My life has been a life dedicated to service,” McGraw said. “My calling to service is through the law and this is an opportunity for me to continue to serve the community that [and] to improve the quality of life for all of the people of West Virginia.”

His one 12-year term on the court was followed shortly after by the tenure he is most known for. McGraw spent two decades as West Virginias Attorney General- a post he lost to current Attorney General Patrick Morrisey during the 2012 election.

During his time as Attorney General, McGraw said there is one area of accomplishments he is most proud of, his work building the office’s Consumer Protection Division.

“Over a period of 20 years, we were able to return to the state and individual people in the state $2 billion,” he said.

Attorney General Morrisey regularly announces settlements with major companies for consumer protection lawsuits and those settlements typically bring millions of dollars back to the state’s coffers.

As recently as last week, Morrisey announced an $8 million settlement with a subsidiary of the financial firm Wells Fargo—a case that, like many others, was filed during the McGraw administration.

“I haven’t heard of any case from the Attorney General’s Office that was not initiated by my tenure in office and I haven’t heard of any program that is being prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office that was not already highly developed,” McGraw said.

But it’s a brief filed during his time as Attorney General that is having an impact on the way McGraw is running his campaign today.

In 2012, McGraw intervened in a case challenging current Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry’s use of the state’s public campaign financing program. The program is only available to Supreme Court candidates who have to meet a number of qualifying requirements before receiving half a million dollars in taxpayer money to pay for their race.

Supporters say public financing keeps politics out of the court system and prevents people from buying off judges to win cases.

In his brief, McGraw called the program unconstitutional. Although after the 2012 election lawmakers made some changes to the program, McGraw still turned down the opportunity to participate in the 2016 race.

“If I had availed myself of that system, I would have certainly been branded right away a hypocrite,” McGraw said.

But in addition to the attacks that could have come from his fellow candidates, McGraw said he also strongly believes there are better uses for taxpayer dollars in such trying financial times.

McGraw was also uncertain about another new factor in this year’s race—the change to nonpartisan elections of judges.

“I think that the notion of nonpartisanship in an election, which is a good theoretical notion, actually deprives people of words that define philosophies,” he said.

“Association with a group of people who express a particular point of view is a good thing and it gives people voice so to that degree it probably deprives people of definition when they go in to vote for a particular candidate.”

Still, when asked to describe his own personal philosophy, McGraw called himself a progressive whose views are shaped by his religious upbringing in southern West Virginia.

“My future performance as a Justice on the West Virginia Supreme Court is to a considerable degree predictable by my past record,” McGaw said, “and I strive to maintain my faith with the voters and to serve the people of West Virginia as my calling in the law.”

Early voting is currently taking place in county courthouses across the state. May 10 is Primary Day and the only time West Virginians can cast ballots in judicial elections at all levels.