EDITORIAL: McKinley Has Earned First Congressional District's Trust
For our Northern West Virginia readers, we salute your decision to elect Republican David McKinley to Congress from the First District. McKinley is the kind of civic leader who used to be more common in politics: part-time civic leader, full-time businessman and family man.
McKinley's community work in the Wheeling area is legendary, as is his professional work as an architectural engineer. Many of Wheeling's beautiful, older buildings have been saved by McKinley's work.
But David McKinley has done another good work, one that is finally bearing fruit in West Virginia. In this work, he has had the help of fellow Republican State Chairs like John Raese, as well as Raese's wife, Liz, the founder of Conservative Women of West Virginia.
Others who have helped in this particular civic work of McKinley's include the more active and engaged members of the State GOP Executive Committee, along with Republican Women, Young Republicans, College Republicans, and Teenage Republicans, along with many other individual conservative activists, GOP office holders, and occasional friends in the state media.
This great civic work is the building up of the two-party system in West Virginia, and it has been a long time coming. While McKinley's exceptional work representing Ohio County in the West Virginia legislature is noteworthy, Republicans around the state know that his leadership as State GOP Chair was his best service to the state to date.
Having a viable party system in West Virginia doesn't require equal numbers in party registration. As long as enough Democrats are willing to be open-minded to a strong Republican candidate, anything is possible now across the Mountain State on Election Day.
How fitting that David McKinley gets to be a Congressional representative from West Virginia from the Republican Party. The man who has helped so many other Republicans get elected now has been elected again himself.
His hard work and understanding of the people in his district have given McKinley the opportunity to represent them in Washington, D.C. We have no doubt that McKinley will serve the Mountain State with distinction.