Posted on 05/22/2005 6:15:10 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Sunday May 22, 2005
By LAWRENCE MESSINA
Associated Press Writer
SOPHIA, W.Va. (AP) Nationally, Robert C. Byrd may wear a Republican bulls-eye the senator atop the GOP's electoral hit list for 2006. But in Sophia, the town of 1,301 he left for Congress some 52 years ago, he is still very much the favorite son.
``He's always trying to help us out,'' said Shawn Stines, a 26-year-old mechanic, as he stuffed a dryer at the Sophia Laundromat. ``I like him. He's a good guy.''
Outside Priddy's Hardware Store, 64-year-old Frances Meredith is even more emphatic.
``I love him,'' Meredith said. ``I dread the day when he passes away.''
It's hard to forget Byrd in Sophia. After all, the main road into town was christened Robert C. Byrd Drive in 1991 after he helped secure the money to build it.
The 17-mile stretch of four-lane highway is one of at least 32 monuments to West Virginia's senior senator. Others include a high school, two federal courthouses, a radio telescope complex and buildings on at least eight college campuses across the state.
Byrd is on track to become the longest serving senator in U.S. history in June 2006, surpassing Strom Thurmond; he's already the sitting member with the lengthiest tenure.
But as he considers running for a record ninth term, he faces what might be the toughest battle of his political career.
Though the 2006 general election is more than 18 months away, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has already started an Internet-based campaign to oust Byrd. Almost daily, it e-mails Byrd-related story ideas and relays articles, columns and even blogs critical of the senator.
``They said that same thing about me in 1982,'' Byrd told The Associated Press. ``I know exactly where the people of West Virginia are. ... When they get Robert C. Byrd, it's a product that they know.''
Byrd has denounced President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, decried his tax cuts and budget policies and helped deadlock some of his judicial nominations. The NRSC says these things put Byrd out of step with West Virginia, which voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, believes the early anti-Byrd drumbeat aims to dissuade him from pursuing re-election.
``They do have a chance to win but not a good chance if Byrd decides to run,'' said Sabato, ``But Byrd is tough. I wouldn't be surprised if it encouraged him to run again.''
While Byrd hasn't said if he will run, he has said he's ``never been afraid of bullies.''
``I may be a target, but I'm a target that shoots back. I'm ready for this campaign,'' he said but then he added, ``if it develops.''
His wife of 67 years, Erma Ora, is seriously ailing. She has her ``good days and bad days,'' Byrd said, but when he asked her if he should run, her response was ``Yes, that's a given.''
There is also a question of his own health. The oldest sitting member of Congress, Byrd will turn 89 in November 2006. He's exhibited trembling in his hands for several years now. Byrd has dismissed it as a ``benign essential tremor,'' a ``cosmetic malady.''
A former butcher who worked in shipyards in Baltimore and Tampa as a welder during World War II, Byrd remains mentally sharp, supporters say. At the recent groundbreaking for the latest project to bear his name, a new pharmacy school in Charleston, Byrd quoted the poet Edwin Markham from memory and included the names of several people in the audience in his remarks.
But such rhetorical flourishes, and his penchant for allusions invoking ancient Greece and Rome, may not translate well for modern voters particularly if voters already see him as frail. His grandiloquence already cost him one job. In 1989, after 12 years as Senate majority leader, colleagues made it clear they wanted a more plainspoken spokesman.
Byrd hasn't lost an election since he ran for the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946. After two terms there and one in the state Senate, Byrd was elected to the U.S. House for three terms before winning his Senate seat in 1958 with 59.2 percent of the vote.
He's carried all 55 counties in the state in four of his eight Senate bids. His best showing was in 2000, when he brushed off token opposition with 77.8 percent of the vote and all but seven of the state's 1,970 voting precincts. In 1976, he ran unopposed.
This time, he will be challenged. U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, daughter of former Gov. Arch Moore, may be the Republicans' best candidate, but she says only that she is ``interested.''
Last month, Hiram Lewis, a 34-year-old lawyer who has twice run unsuccessfully for office, declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination at the West Virginia Capitol beneath a larger-than-life statue of Byrd that declares him ``West Virginian of the 20th Century.''
The statue, an exception to a Capitol rule that an honoree must be dead for at least 50 years, reflects Byrd's status as a legend, throughout the state and up and down Robert C. Byrd Drive.
``He's always been an icon,'' said Eleanor Kidd Locklear, 65, whose father worked alongside Byrd at the local butcher shop before his election to Congress. ``We know our area is taken care of when we have him behind us. And I'm a Republican.''
Byrd has long been adept at bringing federal dollars to his state, fulfilling his pledge to become ``West Virginia's billion-dollar industry'' by 1991. He's helped secure another $1.6 billion for the state since 1999, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.
With 15.3 percent of West Virginia age 65 or older one of the highest proportions of seniors in the country many bristle at the notion that Byrd is too old to run. The senator does, too. ``I've got a lot in me yet. I have some things I want to do,'' he said.
But age is a factor for Jeannie Darnell, who runs a furniture store with her husband on Robert C. Byrd Drive. Though she's consistently voted for him in past races, she will not if he runs again.
``I think he's done a fairly good job while he's been in office, but we all wear out,'' said the 62-year-old Democrat. ``I think we need some younger blood.''
Racial intolerance also shadows Byrd's political legacy. Byrd belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, filibustered for 14 hours against the 1964 civil rights bill and gave an April 1968 floor speech implying that Martin Luther King Jr. was to blame for his own assassination.
Byrd has repeatedly renounced his past. But in 2001, on national television, he said he had seen ``a lot of white niggers in my time'' a phrase for which he apologized, but one that conservative foes say reflects his Klan roots.
Retired schoolteacher Dorothy Cunningham of North Beckley is black, and she said Byrd's past does not lessen her support for him.
``I'm from Alabama, and I know what (the Klan) represents,'' said Cunningham. ``I look at it this way. He's God's child, and he can change.''
Cunningham and other Byrd backers note how local and national black politicians have rallied around him as he considers another run. Freshman U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, perhaps the Democrats' brightest rising star, helped Byrd raise a record-setting $1.16 million in the first three months of 2005 with a letter issued through the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.
Byrd's opposition to Iraq and other Bush policies has won him newfound support in such circles nationwide. They helped make his 2004 book, ``Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency,'' a best seller.
``I think the Republicans are targeting him, but the way he feels, a lot of the time, is the way the people in the state feel,'' said Nancy Mills, 50, a cashier at a lumber yard on Robert C. Byrd Drive. ``I think he's good for West Virginia. I think he's done a lot for the state, and I think he'll do more in the years to come.''
I remember being in West Huntington on Adams or Virginia Avenues and passing by the Heiners Bakery. You could smell bread for several blocks. BTW, the baseball team that played (or still plays) near there, the Huntington Cubs, they moved from MY town in VA to there....
They converted part of Owens into offices and there are some businesses in there. They closed down 11-1/2 years ago. It was awful for all the employees. Some of them were married, so both of them lost their jobs. I had worked there part time for 3 years, then had just accepted a full time (great) job in the office when they decided to shut it down. I thought I would retire from there.
I love the smell of Heiner's bakery. I miss their bread when I go anywhere else. They have been bought out by the people who make Sara Lee bread.
The baseball team is gone. I enjoyed it while they were here. What VA town are you from if you don't mind posting?
byrd should have flown the coop a long time ago.
Not at all, I live in Wytheville, right where I-81 and 77 meet, about 30 miles south of Bluefield and about 80 miles from both Bristol, TN and Roanoke, VA.
Ok...so let me get this straight...
Dorothy here knows what the Klan represents...and feels that Good 'ol Grand Kleagle Bobby Byrd can "change"...a REAL LIFE KLAN RIDER, who may have been involved for all we know in lynchings and cross-burnings!
But Major Owens and Chuckie Rangel and Je$$e Jacka$$ Jr. can call ANY member of the (R)'s a racist...alledge that the new Klan gear is a Black suit and Red power tie...and basically say that all (R)'s are white supremacists....
Tell me, Dorothy...is that speaking "Truth to Power"?
Tell me Dorothy...what color is the sky down on Massa Byrd's plantation?
Hey, we will be coming thru there in less than 3 weeks on our way to FL. Disney World and the Beach, here we come.
How big is Wytheville?
About 10,000 people, and 20,000 truckstops (or so it seems).... Have you ever been to McDowell County?
I probably have been thru it, but have never actually stopped there. It's pretty rural, isn't it? Sort of like most of Wayne County. If it wasn't for Ceredo/Kenova and part of Huntington being in Wayne Co., it would probably have a very small population.
McDowell has Welch, Bradshaw, War, Iaeger (pronounced Yeager), and Coalwood. If you took US 52 south (though I wouldn't recommend it), thru Kermit, Mingo County and then Wyoming County, the next one would be Mcdowell. BTW, I just remembered where that airport is on the hilltop. Didn't they build a natural gas power-generating plant near there some years ago, just past the glass factory?
Then probably not. The farthest I have been that way is Mingo county. I don't like 52 either. Too many coal trucks for my liking.
And yes, they did build that plant. But, Pilgrim glass is gone. Blenko is still in Milton.
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