Posted on 10/14/2005 9:46:50 PM PDT by smoothsailing
So Long, Shelley; Hello, Hiram?
Story by Chris Stirewalt
Since Gen. Allen Tackett, the head of the West Virginia National Guard, endorsed Sen. Robert C. Byrd for re-election and a National Guard plane flew the senator's campaign manager to a fundraiser, we're left to wonder what the other branches of the military can do to show their support for Byrd's ninth term.
If the USS West Virginia surfaces at Sistersville with a "Byrd '06" banner flying from its periscope or if a B-52 carpet bombs the Potomac Highlands with pamphlets, the U.S. Navy and Air Force may be able to catch up.
And since Byrd has been so eager to denounce U.S. military action during the past four years, it might just help keep the pro-defense voters from bolting.
But the recent controversy over the role our military should be playing in politics also has put Byrd's only recognizable opponent thus far in something of a quandary.
Since Hiram Lewis is an officer in the National Guard, is he allowed to endorse himself for Senate while he's in uniform?
He was still in Louisiana on hurricane duty this week, so presumably he's had to avoid making any provocative statements about his candidacy while handing out bottled water and shovels.
We can at least assume he wouldn't do himself any favors with his commanding officer, Gen. Tackett, if he goes around endorsing himself all the time.
And it's not as if Lewis doesn't have enough to worry about.
He lost to Darrell McGraw for attorney general last year by just six-tenths of a percent. He's already raised more than $100,000. He's a lawyer and an Iraqi War veteran. And he's all but ignored by the leaders of his own party.
Part of his problem is that his candidacy so far has been seen as a warm-up act while the Republican throngs waited for Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito to get in the race.
Now that Capito has bowed out, Lewis is like the Sweet Inspirations on concert nights that Elvis couldn't play. Winning the crowd back after the announcement won't be easy.
Lewis is also poorly served by his association with former state party chairman Kris Warner. Lewis stepped in to be party treasurer just as Warner's financially swampy chairmanship was limping to its unpleasant close and was quickly shooed out of his post by Warner's replacement, Rob Capehart.
And perhaps most of all, Lewis is seen as not up to the job of taking on the most dominant West Virginia politician of all time.
It isn't so much his relative youth (53 years Byrd's junior) or lack of prior elective office that gives this sense as much as it is that Lewis doesn't seem fearsome. As tough as the Democrats are already playing, whoever the challenger is going to be will need toughness and smarts of a level unseen in state politics since Arch Moore.
Lewis has proven himself a relentless, enthusiastic and creative campaigner, but it's still hard to picture him podium to podium with Byrd. Byrd would be forgiven the lapses caused by age. Lewis would not.
So who else might be a reasonable alternative?
There is Capehart, the brains of the party in West Virginia. He would probably match up better with Byrd one on one than any Republican politician in the state. Capehart lacks the kind of compelling personal story and oratorical fireworks that win support on the stump, but his debating style and knowledge of policy would make him formidable.
Byrd couldn't look past him.
But if he ran, the tendrils of new growth and respectability that the state party has begun to sprout since Capehart took charge probably would get chopped off. Plunging the party back into Warnarian turmoil seems a high price to pay for a long shot at a win next year.
Then there's Secretary of State Betty Ireland, who knows more about defeating elderly Democrats than any one else. Her thumping of Ken Hechler made headlines and made her a feminist trailblazer as the first woman elected to the executive branch in state history. And she could hold her current office while running for Senate.
The downside?
She has only been in office for nine months and such a run would seem more than a little presumptuous. And her beating Hiram Lewis in a multi-candidate primary would be no sure thing.
And Byrd has no primary opponent. It was state Sen. Mike Oliverio whose primary slap really beat Hechler by making an issue of his age. Ireland was able to run a polite campaign and was still the beneficiary of Oliverio's primary swipe.
Former WVU basketball coach Gale Catlett has also been much discussed. The conversations were apparently enough to prompt The Associated Press to do a hit piece on Catlett that made his retirement sound like a public hanging.
Catlett would have an enormous head start on name recognition, and he has the kind of pedigree that would get big-money national donors to start pumping money into the race. The sound you hear is political consultants salivating.
But Catlett is an unknown commodity in politics, and many reporters remember how prickly he could be under tough questioning. If the coach ran, that mean AP article would seem like a mash note compared to what he'd be getting.
Catlett wouldn't have wanted to play the first round of the NCAA tournament against the University of North Carolina, and the same logic dictates that he shouldn't debut against Byrd.
If he would start out running for Congress against Alan Mollohan in the 1st Congressional District, though, it might be a more fitting tune up for what could be a great political career.
Barring the emergence of a candidate of huge name recognition and a blameless past, the battle with Byrd will be an underdog's affair.
And since sacrificing any of the party's rising stars on the chance that Byrd will falter over the next year seems like bad economics for a party so short on talent, Lewis may be the best bet.
If that's so, Republicans would do well to help improve him as a candidate and prospective lawmaker than keep trying to bust him down in rank.
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Copyright 2005 West Virginia Media.
Bring in Aunt Jemima
ping
The fact that a former member and a LEADER of the KKK is still sitting in the United States Senate in the 21st Century is an abomination of epic proportions (nevermind that the sole African-American in the same body campaigns for him, yet another abomination of equally epic proportions). What lengths the media will go to cover for a Democrat knows no limits. Now, if this were a Republican...
The bigoted bastard'd sheets are about to get cleaned.
Hiram Lewis is a good man and the RNC should throw their support behind him.But,the RNC has all but ignored Katherine Harris in Florida, so I'm not counting on them to help him.
Hiram is a solid conservative, fiscally and socially.
I can pretty much guarantee that if Congresswoman Capito had gotten into the race, the Republican Senatorial Committee would have provided a few million dollars and some staff to control its distribution, but any one else will get exactly as much as Jay Wolfe who got 37% against Rockefeller several years ago, which was $zero. They believe in sending all their money to sure things or even races, and not sending a little to people who they believe won't win (and thus do their part to make the self-fulfilling prophecy come true, which improves their percentages).
You couldn't be any righter, my friend.
Unlike the writer of this article, you know the real score.
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