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May 15, 2023 Editor, The News-Gazette: For those of us living near the interstate, let’s call it “The Politics of I-64.” Go east and you will zip through Virginia’s imperial city. That’s where a former 6’7” basketball player takes timeout while doing his short gig as governor. It’s short because Virginia is the only state that does not allow governors to run on their record. So Mr. Youngkin is spending his spare time improving his game on a different court — the political court, where he only shoots from the right. Look for future games in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Go west on I-64 and you will catch West Virginia’s Jim and Joe Act. First the current governor, then the former governor. Jim Justice is a Republican, a new label that fits well with the 61 percent in his state who voted for The Donald in 2020. Let’s call West Virginia the flip side of California. Jim can’t sit still. Before sitting in the governor’s chair he ran the Greenbrier until he asked his daughter Jill to run the resort so he could keep coaching his high school girls basketball team. Now Big Jim wants another seat. It also happens to be Joe’s current seat and it is not in West Virginia, but in D.C. Why this move? To give control of the U.S. Senate to the Republicans.
As for West Virginia Joe, who was scorned by Scranton Joe, the nearby natural gas Mountain Valley Pipeline still sits in the spring mud. The prez got his way. Warning: Joe Manchin plays political hardball. When he was first governor (don’t count out a rerun), he did not mind burning the telephone lines to convince the Boy Scouts of America to have its Jubilee not at Lake Merriweather, but deep down in his state, in the New River Gorge, in spite of the fact that the BSA real estate team favored “on the merits” the Virginia site in Rockbridge County over West Virginia.I’m sure your readers got all that. While politics, like life, is complicated, it, too, is a fun game. “Happy days are here again.” DAVID REYNOLDS Rockbridge County
