Chad Abshire
Staff Writer
WILLIAMSON — Tuesday’s election didn’t only result in the nation choosing to give President Barack Obama a second term, but also saw a number of incumbents re-elected and defeated in both West Virginia and Kentucky.
In West Virginia, U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall won his 19th consecutive term. The Congressman fought off a challenge from Republican Delegate Rick Snuffer to win. Snuffer had tried to portray Rahall as a congressman who hadn’t fought hard enough against the Obama administration and federal regulators when it came to coal policies. The first-term state delegate lost to Rahall in 2004, too.
Also winning West Virginia races in Tuesday’s election were:
• Republican Shelley Moore Capito won a 7th term representing the state’s 2nd District in Congress.
• Republican U.S. Rep. David McKinley was re-elected in West Virginia’s 1st District.
• Secretary of State Natalie Tennant was re-elected to a second term.
• Auditor Glen Gainer was re-elected to his sixth term as the state’s official bookkeeper.
• West Virginia Treasurer John Perdue was re-elected.
• Republican Bill Cole unseated state Sen. Mark Wills, D-Mercer, in the 6th District.
• Voters also awarded a pair of 12-year terms on the five-seat Supreme Court of Appeals. Justice Robin Davis, a Democrat, won re-election and was joined by Republican Allen Loughry, a longtime lawyer at the court. They outpaced Democrat Tish Chafin, a recent State Bar president, and Circuit Judge John Yoder, a Republican.
• Sen. Walt Helmick won an open seat for agriculture commissioner. The Greenbrier County Democrat defeated Republican Kent Leonhardt.
• Republican Patrick Morrisey denied state Attorney General Darrell McGraw a sixth term.
• West Virginia voters again rejected constitutional amendment to lift term limits on sheriffs.
In Kentucky, voters overwhelmingly supported the amendment to hunting and fishing, with 84.49 percent voting for it across the state. In Pike County, Ky., there were 18,271 votes for and 1,950 against.
Results for the rest of Pike County are as follows:
• U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers was re-elected.
• Republican Bobby Wayne McCool was voted as state Representative for the 97th district.
• Will T. Scott was chosen as Justice of the Supreme Court over Janet L. Stumbo for the 7th Supreme Court District.
• Justin Maynard defeated Earl Dean Thacker for the board of education, 2nd educational district; as did Ken C.B. Biliter over Frank D. McGuire in the 5th.
• Andrew H. Scott, Marilyn D. Compton, Bill Ramey and Jerry Bliffen were chosen as city commissioners for the City of Coal Run.
• Jeff “Bo” Bailiff, Danny W. Matney, Jackie L. Turner, Roxanne M. Blankenship, B.G. “Butch” Cure and Lois E. Cantrell won the city council in the City of Elkhorn City.
• Barry N. Chaney, James A. “Jimmy” Carter, Jerry Keith Coleman and Eugene “Gene” Davis were voted city commissioners in the City of Pikeville.
• State Sen. Ray S. Jones, State Reps. W. Keith Hall and Leslie Combs, Commonwealth’s Attorney Rickey L. Bartley, Circuit Clerk Anna Gayle Pinson, County Surveyor Mike Titus and 3rd Educational district board of education member Frank D. Ratliff all ran unopposed in the election.
As a result of the election for West Virginia:
• The state became the South’s only Legislature where Democrats control both chambers, despite the GOP’s House gains.
• Republicans won 44 of 100 House seats and were poised to land two more in races decided by less than 75 votes in unofficial returns. That gives the GOP its largest share in that chamber since 1942, when it held 44 of 94 seats.
• Democrat Stephen Skinner of Jefferson County won an open House seat Tuesday to become the Legislature’s first openly gay member. Skinner founded Fairness West Virginia, a group that advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender residents.
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