The Chamber of Commerce and the coal industries have a lot at stake in these state Supreme Court races.
Recently, there were monumental court decisions that affected the gas community. There has recently been a recent ruling where this Governor filed an amicus brief and wanted to see due process for DuPont Chemical in a case concerning the community of Spelter, WV (they have a Spelter smelter). The community received a settlement for continued health testing from DuPont.
Then, there’s the infamous issues with the WV Supreme Court with Don Blankenship at Massey Energy with Supreme Court Justice Maynard. They grew up together but Blankenship had spent 3.5 million dollars to get a Republican attorney onto the Supreme Court and that as a new justice on the Supreme Court refused to recuse himself on cases that involved Massey Energy and Don Blankenship.
Potential outcome of decisions by the courts have profound effects on these industries [that] are clearly violating the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc. all the time. Massey Energy alone has ranked up 2.4 billion dollars in fines in violation of the Clean Water Act. It was ultimately settled for 20 million dollars.
The taxpayer in WV is constantly getting the shaft. And so are the communities. But in the case of DuPont, you have a governor wanting to see due process given to this corporate citizen by the name of DuPont as opposed to due process to his own public employees which he denies.
There’s a lot here. It’s a quagmire. It’s a can of worms. Once you open it, it will take quite awhile to sit through.
In addition to talk of voting irregularities, Johnson talked about West Virginians and the battle to get paper ballots:
West Virginians are very compliant people unfortunately in many ways, and when people in positions of authority tell them everything is okay and the news corroborates it, then they tend to want to believe it. The biggest battle we had a few years ago was to make sure that there was some paper trail. However, I found that not to be very effective. I know when I voted the last time I was unable to see my paper trail. As far as a push for paper ballot, that push has not been made by the citizenry in mass but I expect it will be made especially when considering the reports we are receiving now.
Johnson’s race has featured all the characteristics of a race where a third-party candidate is struggling to be regarded in the same manner that the two prominent parties are regarded. He was not allowed in the first debate but was allowed into the rest of the debates. (Four were held altogether and included a television, a newspaper, a radio, and a public broadcasting debate.)
The first debate was the only state-wide network televised debate. According to the Charleston Gazette, his complaint against the West Virginia Broadcasters Association, which sponsored the debate, and the Clay Center, which hosted the debate, was, according to David Barnette, a lawyer for the broadcasters’ group, a publicity stunt.
Barnette cited the fact that Johnson had held a news conference and released a statement to the press to make his case and then compared the debate Johnson was being kept out of to the recent debates in the presidential campaign saying that those did not include third party candidates either.
Johnson has been endorsed by the Sierra Club and said that it had helped “incrementally” because no news agency had been interested in talking about how for the first time in the 116 year history of the Sierra Club they have endorsed someone outside of the two-party system. (Since then, the Citizen Action Fund has endorsed Johnson too.)
I’ll highlight this fact again---The Sierra Club has never before endorsed any minor party candidate for any important office in the history of the U.S, according to Ballot Access News.
Johnson talked about how he explains to other people all the trials and tribulations of campaigning as a third party candidate for governor:
I try to get people to understand it’s tough to support a third party candidate when most people believe a third party candidate has no chance of winning. However, in WV, the lines are very blurred. 2 to 1 Democratic but those Democrats are very conservative Democrats. There was a time in the history of America when they would have been considered Dixiecrat. Getting them to donate money and convince them that they will not waste their vote is a tough thing to do. However, I like to emphasize that they should vote for their values. They need to find common ground with their neighbor and find out what the majority of West Virginians have in common. Certainly, mountaintop removal (MTR) is a rallying battle cry because in the state of West Virginia nearly 70% in most polls are against MTR. I put forward the concept as best I can but the media limits my exposure particularly in these debates but if every West Virginian forgot whether there a Democrat or Republican and focused on the fact that they are West Virginians and their heritage and their jobs and their water and their atmosphere and their culture is being destroyed by this one single practice---then for the first time in 100 years they could actually have someone sitting in the governor’s office who would truly advocate for the people and not just those big extractive industries that are absentee landowner industries anyway.
MTR refers to the blasting away of mountain ridges to get to the coal underneath.
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