Once again, West Virginia's solid Democrat majority has proven its independence by voting for a Republican president while continuing to cast ballots for virtually every other Democrat on the ticket. And for the third straight presidential election, a 93,000-vote majority compiled by Republican John McCain over President-elect Barack Obama is probably due to many factors.

Still, in many parts of mostly rural West Virginia where Democrats are just as conservative as their Republican neighbors on both race and religion, it was not uncommon in recent weeks to hear discussions that carried hints of strong objections to Obama on one or both of those sensitive topics.

Four years ago, one of the state's strongest Democrat-dominated counties cast 56.4 percent of its votes for John Kerry as he was nevertheless losing this state by more than 97,000 votes in President Bush's successful race for a second term. This time, Mingo County, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 10-1, went for McCain by 56 percent to 44 percent for Obama.

Were it not for straight-ticket votes in many of these counties, this year's difference would probably be even greater. In Cabell County, the state's second largest where more than 35,000 people voted, Obama got slightly more than 15,000 votes to more than 18,500 for McCain. But nearly 43 percent of the Obama tallies were the result of 6,491 straight ticket Democrat ballots.

The other major Republican winner in this state was Rep. Shelley Moore Capito in the 2nd Congressional District. Her win over Democrat challenger Anne Barth was not so much a surprise as was the comfortable 57 percent to 43 percent margin of victory.

And even though the prevailing political view is that any loss is, well, a loss, two other Republicans made impressive showings that suggest potential future success. Charleston attorney Dan Greear gave incumbent Attorney General Darrell V. McGraw a scare before losing by less than 5,000 votes statewide. And Beth Walker, another attorney living in Charleston, came within 7,000 votes of grabbing the second 12-year term on the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals from former justice Margaret Workman.

Both Greear and Walker were the beneficiaries of large sums of money from national business organizations that would like to oust McGraw for his very successful lawsuits on behalf of consumers and want more business-friendly people serving on the five-member Supreme Court. Walker also came up with some last-minute positive advertising making her position clear on some key issues.

Even James Michael Teets, a Pendleton County farmer, made an impressive albeit low-budget run as the Republican challenger to perennial incumbent Democrat Gus Douglass, who managed to win another four-year term as Commissioner of Agriculture by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin.

 

 

The solid Democrat majority in the West Virginia Senate, which had been 23-11 for the past two years, could be as wide as 26-8 pending the outcome of a close race in the state's eastern panhandle.

Democrats picked up seats in both the 1st and 8th senatorial districts and may also capture a former Republican seat in the Eastern Panhandle's 16th District, where Sen. John Yoder, R-Jefferson, successfully ran for election as a circuit court judge. Democrat Herb Snyder, a former member of the Senate, has a 200-vote lead over Republican challenger Bob Adams, but the winner won't be certain until the canvass is completed in Berkeley and Jefferson counties, probably sometime this week.

The new Democrat senators are Jack Yost of Wellsburg and Corey Palumbo of Charleston, both moving over from the House of Delegates. Yost succeeds Sen. Andy McKenzie, R-Ohio, who has moved to a new job as mayor of the city of Wheeling, and Palumbo will take the seat held by former Senate Minority Leader Vic Sprouse of South Charleston, who decided not to run for another four-year term.

In two other races that Senate Democrats considered as potential gains, Senate Minority Leader Don Caruth, R-Mercer, survived a close race against former Democrat House member Jim McNeely in the 10th District, and Sen. Clark Barnes, R-Randolph, bested former Democrat senator Mike Ross by more than 5,000 votes in the nine-county 15th District.

 

 

Despite all the pre-election concerns about problems with the electronic voting machines, there seems to have been virtually no problems in the state's 55 counties during last week's general election. Concerns, instead, should be that despite a record-setting turnout nationwide, here in West Virginia the number of eligible voters who actually cast ballots was 8 percent less than the last presidential election in 2004.

Those of us who stood in line for as long as an hour and a half to vote on Nov. 4 were probably the most surprised by the lower turnout, since we spent a lot of that time discussing the likelihood that this would prove to be a record turnout here as well as nationally.

Tom Miller is a retired state government reporter for The Herald-Dispatch. He is a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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