Independent Political Report reports that former Congressman Ken Hechler of West Virginia has endorsed Jesse Johnson for U.S. Senate this year. Johnson is the nominee of the Mountain Party, which is the ballot-qualified Green Party affiliate in West Virginia.
Hechler is one of the most distinguished ex-members of Congress living. He has been a professor; Associate Director of the American Political Science Association; a former four-term Secretary of State of West Virginia; a former Assistant to President Harry Truman; and an assistant to the prosecution at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945-1946. He was the research director for the national Democratic Party’s presidential campaign in 1956. The IPR report includes a you tube showing Hechler endorsing Johnson, and Johnson’s response.
Jesse Johnson in 2008 polled 4.44% for Governor when he was the Mountain Party’s nominee. That was the highest percentage of the vote that any minor party or independent candidate had polled for Governor of West Virginia since 1920.
Hechler is 3 years older than Robert Byrd and finished 3rd in the blanket primary with just over 10% of the vote.
This is good news for Jesse. And for the Mountain Party, an affiliate of the Green Party of the United States. It is also significant that (at last) Democrats in West Virginia, at least some of them, can see their way clear to reject the complicity of the Democratic Party of West Virginia in the rape of the state by the Coal Barons.
John Rensenbrink
Green Party of Maine
co-founder U.S. Green Party
Ken Hechler, was number two behind Manchin and received almost 17,000 votes. PLEASE keep in mind, for those who do not know. WV has a huge voter registration, one of the largest in the nation. We have roughly 118,000,000, that is million registered voters and less than 13%, if that many, which was 146,366 voters came out to vote.
So, Manchin’s “popular landslide” nomination was nothing more than something fabricated by the media. I really wish the media was not so politically and corporately biased and owned so that West Virginian’s could received some accurate news for a change. So disheartening! Here is a quote from the Charleston Gazette:
“There was only a 12 percent turnout, which is outrageously low,” said Hechler, who was the state’s chief elections officer from 1985 to 2001.
“A lot of people obviously did not care to vote,” he added. “I don’t know how to analyze it. I just think it’s terrible, that’s all.”
Hechler finished a distant second in the Democratic primary to Gov. Joe Manchin, with 16,114 votes (17 percent) to Manchin’s 67,380 votes (73 percent). Former two-term state legislator Sheirl Fletcher finished third, with 9,084 votes, or 10 percent.”