Statehouse Beat: New Democratic Vice Chairman Relishes Challenge

One of the conclusions of the post-mortems of the 2014 state elections was the failure of state Democrats to head off the red wave by differentiating themselves from their GOP rivals.Then-state Democratic Party chairman Larry Puccio was comparatively placid in the face of GOP attacks on statewide and legislative candidates, and while labor-funded Honest West Virginians PAC mounted a nearly $1.4 million ad campaign in the Democrats' defense, the ads were terribly ineffective, making nebulous claims about how the Republican challengers were puppets of Don Blankenship and the Koch brothers, and favored things such as ending Social Security and Medicaid.With the change of leadership in the state party, Belinda Biafore is the new chairwoman, but perhaps more significantly, vice chairman Christopher Regan has assumed the role of bulldog-in-chief, and the Wheeling attorney has proven himself adept at jumping into the fray to take the majority party to task on the airwaves and in social media.His challenge is great, to invigorate those two-thirds of state voters who didn't bother to go to the polls last November, many presumably because they couldn't see a nickel's worth of difference between the Republicans and their Republican-lite challengers.Regan told me that will be different in 2016."We're going to show a real clear difference between Democrats as the party that supports working people in West Virginia, and the Republican Party that is holding $100,000 breakfasts for out-of-state special interests who expect a return on all that money," he said.Where Democrats in 2014 offered generalities, Regan said the 2015 legislative session has provided a wagon-load of substantive issues to use against the majority party, including rolling back prevailing wage, pushing right-to-work, rolling back coal mine and workplace safety standards, barring new, innovative businesses from the state, and attempting to impose their morality on issues including abortion and LGBT rights."They gave everyone a pretty clear idea what direction they intend to go in and it's frightening," Regan said.He said the session also provides the narrative that the majority party is acting, not on behalf of their constituents, but for the special interests that funded gray money campaigns on their behalf."The thing that drives the Republican agenda is not the free market or market forces, but what do these big donors want, what does ALEC want?" Regan said.He said Republicans had an advantage in 2014, in that they could speak out against an unpopular president, while themselves having no substantive record on the issues to have to defend."The Republicans had the advantage of being able to say, "We're running on the economy and jobs," Regan said, saying they may well have to explain in 2016 why they didn't deliver on those promises."I can't really speak for what did or didn't happen in '14, but I think there's going to be a very clear distinction shown in 2016 as to who we are and what they are."Regan said he believes Republicans will have a much harder time in 2016, and based on his mini-debates on radio, frequent Twitter tweets and online commentaries, Regan himself very well could be part of the reason why.nnnSpeaking of negative campaigning, one of the sillier and ultimately least effective attacks in the 2014 election was mounted by a GOP operative whose name escapes me who filed Ethics complaints against selected Democratic members of the House of Delegates for using their franking privilege to send letters to constituents.All of the complaints ultimately were dismissed, and voters saw through the smear since, I believe, all but one of the targeted incumbents were re-elected.Word is, Republican delegates were advised at a caucus early in the 2014 session not to use legislative postage so as to not cloud the premise that Democrats were abusing the system -- which piqued my interest to see if that had changed this session.According to data provided by the House, three of the top five users of the franking privilege this session were Republicans.Energy Chairman Woody Ireland, R-Ritchie, was the top user of legislative postage, with 647 mailings at a cost of $326.94; followed by freshman Delegate Mick Bates, D-Raleigh, 255 pieces at $122.61; Delegate Randy Smith, R-Preston, 249, $119.52; Delegate Peggy Donaldson Smith, D-Lewis, 226, $116.67; and Speaker Tim Armstead, R-Kanawha, 187, $89.46.If you're keeping score at home, 46 Republicans and 27 Democrats used legislative postage to mail letters and parcels to constituents.