Posted on 10/15/2002 2:15:07 PM PDT by EternalVigilance
Mike Connolly Daily Mail Staff
Tuesday October 15, 2002; 11:00 AM
Not even the Republican Senatorial Committee thinks Jay Wolfe can unseat incumbent Democrat Jay Rockefeller in the West Virginia Senate race.
The committee can give Wolfe, 47, up to $202,000 to help his campaign. So far, they haven't given him a dime and the election is only three weeks away.
But Wolfe isn't complaining too much. He knows he is a long shot to beat Rockefeller.
"I guess I understand it," Wolfe said about the committee. "When I got into it, I didn't ask them if I should. I really didn't expect them to help me much."
So the Wolf Summit resident will try to beat an incumbent three-term senator from one of the wealthiest families in America with $100,000 and almost no name recognition.
But Wolfe is confident. He's challenged some tough politicians before and even won once.
With no money from the state Republican committee, Wolfe beat 14-year Legislature veteran Gino Colombo in 1986 to win a seat in the state Senate.
Two years later he ran against Sen. Robert Byrd for a seat in the U.S. Senate and lost by a considerable margin.
"Most people don't even remember that I ran," Wolfe said, but he also reminded the Daily Mail's editorial board Monday that he got 35 percent of the vote against Byrd -- which is better than most people can do against West Virginia's senior senator.
This year, even as his own party dismisses him as running a lost cause, Wolfe is confident he can win. Wolfe says that Rockefeller's assumed easy victory is the exact reason he will pull off an upset. He is concentrating his efforts on getting state Republicans out to vote.
He hopes that Democrats, certain of a Rockefeller victory, will stay home Nov. 5.
"The conventional wisdom says Rockefeller will win," he said. "I don't think he is nearly as well loved as Robert Byrd is. I think he is vulnerable."
A key plank in Wolfe's plan is pointing out how different he is than Rockefeller. He calls Rockefeller "a typical tax-and-spend liberal." Wolfe, a Baptist deacon at Clarksburg Baptist Church, is a fiscal and social conservative.
"Government needs to do as much as possible to get out of people's lives," Wolfe said.
He is staunchly pro-life, opposes the "radical homosexual agenda" and wants to take funding away from museums and theater groups that produce "pornography."
"I believe there is a war in this country right now over morals," Wolfe said.
When it comes to taxes, Wolfe has a plan to radically revamp the federal tax system.
If Wolfe were elected, he would work to abolish all federal income taxes including Social Security and Medicare deductions. To replace the tax base, he would create a national retail sales tax somewhere between 20 percent and 30 percent. Wolfe claims his plan would be revenue neutral and would stimulate the American economy.
"It would help our industrial base," Wolfe said. "We could become again the industrial giant that we used to be."
Wolfe also supports President Bush's plan for a war in Iraq, has the backing of the NRA when it comes to gun control and wants to cut taxes.
He is very clear about what he wants to do. Now all he has to do is pull off a seemingly impossible upset. But recent history seems to favor a Republican underdog in West Virginia.
"Nobody gave Bush a chance to win in this state in 2000 either," Wolfe said with a smile.
Writer Mike Connolly can be reached at 348-4806
By the way I have signed up 23 new voters this week.
HLL Go to your photo ops and stay out of WV politics!
By the way I have signed up 23 new voters this week.
Way to go!!
Everyone needs to remember that tomorrow is the registration deadline...I understand most of the Courthouses are staying open a few extra hours to accomodate people who want to register.
Keep up the good work, my friend. It's efforts like yours that could provide the winning margin.
I live in Texas, and under the state GOP leadership, the RiNO's consistently have dry-gulched conservatives with business-lobby money in the primaries -- even incumbent conservatives -- in order to bring "better representation" to the state legislature and school board. They did it again last spring, backing state legislator Kyle Janek, an atrocious warmed-over power Democrat who actually votes with Democrats on leadership in the Lege.
True.
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