West Virginia Gazette - From Right and Left, Senate Candidates Attack Capito

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By David Gutman

A day after being chastised by the West Virginia Supreme Court for her handling of a candidate's withdrawal from the November election, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant acknowledged her mistake as she and other candidates for the U.S. Senate went after the absent Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

"I take responsibility, and we are rectifying it as we speak," Tennant said of the State Election Commission's decision to allow the withdrawal of Delegate Suzette Raines but not allow a replacement candidate. "We had a five-member State Election Commission, and we looked at the evidence that was given to us."

Tennant noted that the election commission is bipartisan and contains three lawyers. The Supreme Court called their decision a "gross misinterpretation" of state law.

Tennant, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, said Capito is "playing politics with people's lives" for repeatedly voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act while at the same time supporting the more popular parts of the law.

"We now have 150,000 or more West Virginians who have insurance because of Medicaid expansion, she votes 54 times to take that insurance," Tennant said in a meeting with Gazette editors. "She'll look you in the eye and say she's for covering people with pre-existing conditions and she's voted 54 times to take it away."

Capito would not meet with Gazette editors.

Tennant said she would like to do away with one unpopular piece of the law which has yet to go into effect -- the "employer mandate," which requires large employers to offer health insurance or pay a penalty.

Most health analysts have said that repealing the employer mandate would not have a big effect on the number of uninsured people but would make a big hole in the law's funding. Tennant said that gap could be filled in a number of ways, for instance, by letting the government negotiate with drug companies for lower Medicare prescription prices, something it is prohibited from doing under the prescription drug expansion passed in 2003.

Other, lesser known, Senate candidates said they think the ACA went way too far and also that it didn't go far enough.

John Buckley, a former Virginia state delegate and a Libertarian candidate for Senate, said government needs to get entirely out of the field of health care and also criticized Capito for her approach.

"I'm continually astounded by the Republican candidate's position of votes against it but a constant throwing in of the towel, saying it's not going to be repealed," Buckley said. "The things you want to throw out, if they're thrown out and the other parts are kept, it's going to crash the system."

Phil Hudok, a public school physics teacher and the Constitution Party candidate, said health care is not authorized under the Constitution and that he'd like to see government entirely out of health care.

Buckley and Hudok said that, eventually, they'd like to see Medicare and Medicaid repealed

Bob Henry Baber, a former mayor of Richwood and the Mountain Party candidate, said health care is a universal right and that, while he supports the ACA, it still leaves millions uninsured.

"Having private industry lead the way has gotten us to the point where we have 40 million uninsured," Baber said. ""Obamacare' was a relatively ragged patch on a torn quilt."

Baber, an administrator at Glenville State College, criticized Capito for her votes for House budgets that would drastically cut the Pell Grant program.

"If Pell grants disappear," he said, "Glenville's closing its doors the next day."

Tennant agreed and also noted that those budgets, from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., also cut taxes and the Head Start program.

"If you're building a house, the foundation is most important. Well, so is early childhood education," Tennant said. "She has voted four times to cut Head Start and give that money in tax breaks to millionaires."

Buckley said the federal government should not be involved in education and that funding for things like Pell grants was helping fuel tuition inflation.

"The government gets in, mucks it up, and then everyone says we need more government to solve a problem government created in the first place," he said.

Hudok said the federal government should spend no money at all on education. He also said climate change is a fraud and that President Obama is not a "natural-born" U.S. citizen. The first of those statements is generally accepted as false, contradicted by a majority of climate scientists. The second statement is false.

Tennant said that, as the government looks for ways to fight global warming, it needs to fund new technology and research to make coal cleaner and keep it viable.

"Either retrofit coal-fired power plants or build new ones with carbon capture and sequestration," she said.

Buckley said such funding would come from a government "cupboard that's bare" and said market forces could solve global warming, if it is a problem.

Baber, who supports a ban on mountaintop removal mining, called for raising the coal severance tax and using that money to fund green energy programs.

He noted that coal jobs, particularly in Southern West Virginia, have been disappearing for years -- a trend that's expected to continue, even without controversial Environmental Protection Agency regulations on carbon emissions.

"Where's Capito's plan for the future?" Baber asked. "Where's the retraining plan for Southern West Virginia coal miners?"

Tennant talked about promoting West Virginia as an energy state, from coal to silica mined in Fayette County, which could be used to manufacture solar panels here, to all the manufacturing that could result from the proposed natural gas cracker plant in Wood County.

Buckley said there is no magical solution for job losses in Southern West Virginia but that you can't use tax dollars for training programs and that government's first principle should be "do no harm."

All three minor-party candidates criticized the sponsors of next week's televised debate -- AARP West Virginia, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, West Virginia MetroNews and the West Virginia Press Association -- for excluding them.

"It's profoundly a disservice to the public of West Virginia," Buckley said.

"People have decided for the people of West Virginia who they are going to hear," Baber said. "That is just plain wrong."

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