CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Much has been written of late about campaign finance. Just as we all got tired of negative ads, the latest blasphemy is even worse.

No one runs for office wanting to self-fund any portion of their campaign. However, when you enter the arena you quickly realize that many of the tactics used by the entrenched political elite in our state make it exceedingly difficult for a challenger to compete. From pulled permits, to tax audits, to investigations, to state contracts being pulled – we have heard it all. In a free society, we should not allow threats, incumbent-self-protection techniques, and machine politics to discourage fresh faces with bold new ideas from entering the political process. When a candidate self-finances, it is merely an attempt to counteract the natural, and frequently inappropriate advantages of incumbency. Ultimately, our elected officials work for the people of the state and should not be beholden to wealthy special interests and the politically well connected. Our founding fathers envisioned good people of high moral character serving in public office. They must be rolling over in their graves to see how difficult it is for non-incumbents to compete in today’s political environment!

Another factor which needs to be addressed is the proliferation of outside groups and obscure organizations. Lately they have gained dramatic influence. It should be easier for candidates to promote their own message and not rely on third parties of narrow special interest. One way this could be accomplished is by raising individual contribution limits. Wouldn’t West Virginians prefer a system where voters hear more from candidates instead of third parties who aren’t subject to campaign finance limits?

Too many of our native sons and daughters have to leave the state to find work. Too many children die from abuse and neglect in West Virginia. Over the last year, we lost more jobs than any other state. Workers in West Virginia earn smaller paychecks than anywhere else in the nation. West Virginia was again ranked last for legal fairness and continues to be near the top of the Judicial Hellhole list. Our state deserves better!

While the result of our race was disappointing, we are incredibly proud of what we accomplished in West Virginia against a liberal nationwide tidal wave. We have a new Attorney General, Patrick Morrisey, and a State Supreme Court Justice in Allen Loughry who will both uphold the values of Adams, Jefferson and Washington. The Legislature is filled with many likeminded Mountaineers who ran for no other reason than to help others. For the first time in nearly a century, the House of Delegates is truly a two-party chamber.

Running for governor has been the honor of my life. I have had the opportunity to meet and connect with incredible people, who share the same desire to bring a brighter future to West Virginia for generations to come. Sharon and I made a choice to contribute and improve our state. This choice came with great sacrifice over the course of the last two years, both in time and resources. We cannot imagine any other endeavor that had such a profound effect on so many.

West Virginia is an incredible place to call home and I am proud to be a Mountaineer. It is worth fighting for and I ask you to continue with me in that fight. Let’s take a serious look at election and ethics reforms, before it’s too late. We desperately need to attract more good people to seek public office.

Maloney is the principal of Cow Run Energy LLC and Drill Leader LLC. He is a founder of many successful West Virginia companies including North American Drillers, Inc. He used his expertise to rescue 33 Chilean miners in 2010 and was the Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia in both 2011 and 2012.

###

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Dreamswork Fieldhouse is not a remarkable name for University High School’s athletic building.

But the name is a remark on the Republican candidate for governor, Bill Maloney, who started the charity fund with his wife.

On the campaign trail, “work” is Maloney’s theme: As a businessman, he’s done it and created it. In West Virginia, there isn’t enough of it. And he wants to change that.

Now voters must again decide whether they believe he can. They did not think so last year. That’s when Maloney lost a special election for a one-year term to Democrat Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

Even Maloney’s fiercest critics concede he is a nice guy with a good business background. But they publicly question whether he knows policy well enough to talk about it or has enough skill to govern.

University’s retired long-time Principal Bill Wilson does not have that question.

Wilson argues the learning curve for governor is “not that steep – I hate to tell them.”

Wilson credits Maloney with helping to find the site for the new high school, which opened in 2008. He remembers Maloney poring over building plans, selling the construction bond during talks with community groups and finally raising private money to help build the school’s athletic facilities, which are some of the nicest in the state.

“Bill has the capacity to see disjointed parts and put them together,” Wilson said.

Wilson had a simple pitch.

“West Virginia, give Bill the job. If you don’t like it, you can get rid of him in four years,” Wilson said. “Hell, four years to see if it works.”

Charleston

Some wonder what Maloney can do if he takes office. He will likely have an experienced, Democrat-controlled Legislature to contend with.

Maloney said he has a basic philosophy for what needs to be changed in West Virginia: cut bureaucracies, weed out corruption, shakeup public education and pass tort reforms.

Sometimes he is short on the details, though. When he does offer specifics, they can end up biting him.

But Maloney said his “basic philosophy” will be good for the state, just let him get into office.

“I see my opponent; he’s surrounded himself with a bunch of young lawyers,” Maloney said. “No business experience there.”

Maloney was not a politician before he started his run. Nor does he appear to be an ideologue: He’s donated to Democrats like Joe Manchin and Mike Oliverio, a fact that came up during last year’s Republican primary.

But he once chaired the state Builders and Contractors Association. That brought him into occasional contact with lawmakers in Charleston and Washington.

If Maloney learned anything from those brief forays into politics, it’s that insiders have the power in Charleston.

“It seems a lot of deals got done at the Marriott bar,” Maloney said. “It didn’t do you any good to go to somebody’s office.”

Disjointed Parts

Maloney turned 54 earlier this month. He was born in Syracuse, N.Y.

Democrats have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure voters know he is technically a New Yorker. But it’s a frustrating label for the Maloneys.

“Where did we choose to live and where did we choose to stay?” his wife, Sharon Maloney, said.

West Virginia has lost about 100,000 people since they moved here in 1981. Bill Maloney talks about that on the campaign trail, blames Tomblin for it and pledges to reverse the brain drain.

Bill and Sharon met in 1978. They were both 19. Sharon, who is six weeks older than Bill, was going to the University of Delaware and he was going to Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. They married three years later. They were both 22.

Maloney started his career as a drilling engineer at Layne. He started out in Edison, N.J., a township of about 70,000 people at the time.

“I was like, ‘Get me out of there, what’ve you got?’ ” he recalled telling his bosses at Layne.

The Maloneys spent three months in Pittsburgh, and then came to Teays Valley in 1981 just as West Virginia University’s football team was having its first winning season in six years. They quickly became Mountaineer fans.

Drilling down

Three years later, Bill Maloney “threw it all away” in the Kanawha Valley, moved to Morgantown and started North American Drillers in 1984 with another ex-Layne man.

The company started on loans and with the help of family. (Maloney’s parents died about nine months apart in the mid-1990s.)

“There was a lot of times we didn’t get a paycheck because the employees had to be paid before us,” Sharon Maloney said.

There is an easy way to chart the company’s success: as the holes got bigger, so did the company.
The company drilled holes for water wells. Eventually, they had proven themselves enough to get work drilling ventilation shafts in the Pittsburgh coal seam, which runs across North Central West Virginia and parts of Pennsylvania.

“You had to build up a reputation before coal miners really believe you can do things,” Maloney said.

Dee Jay Utt was the company’s second hire. He’s still there. He remembers the early days. The first company car was a Ford Escort. Maloney, a tall man, did not fit well. So, they cut out part of the frame to lower the seat.

“Then it looked like he was sitting on the floor,” Utt said.

Even though Maloney’s job was mainly to sell contracts, he did not hesitate to come out and work in the snow and mud or bring pizza to his employees in the middle of the night.

“One of the reasons he and I got to be such good friends is he wasn’t afraid to jump in and hand tools,” Utt said.

When business was slow, the company did everything to keep workers on the payroll, Utt said. They would clean or paint or do just about anything to stay busy, “even if we had to turn gravel over in the parking lot.” Maloney also fought to get employees a 401(k), health insurance and bonuses that grew from $25 to several thousand dollars.

Utt said Maloney constantly looked out for workers’ safety.

At home, Sharon Maloney said, “He makes me wear goggles when I cut the grass.”

By 2000, North American Drillers was big enough to buy out a competitor in the area.

Six years later, Maloney sold his interest in the combined company, Shaft Drillers International, and entered a fitful retirement.

Retirement

Even before he retired, the Maloneys were active in charities. When one of their daughter’s classmates suddenly lost his father, they started the Hope Works scholarship for Monongalia County students from families that suddenly lost income due to death or divorce.

Billy Atkins, a partner at Bowles Rice in Morgantown, met Maloney a quarter century ago. At the time, Atkins was reviewing loans for a bank and Maloney was trying to get his business off the ground. Years later, the two were among a group of well-to-do northern West Virginians that built an umbrella charity. Their goal was to give the Morgantown area a philanthropic group akin to the Greater Kanawha Valley Foundation, which serves the Charleston area.

“You get nothing other than the satisfaction of seeing it benefit the community,” Atkins said.

Still, Maloney evidently had made a name for himself in the community. Republicans started talking to him about making a run for governor. He met with party officials in Washington, but Sharon was not on board.

Part of her hesitation was because of their two daughters.

“We didn’t really want to expose them to the political life,” she said.

That changed after Maloney flew to Chile in 2010 to help rescue 33 miners who were trapped 2,100 feet underground. Their ordeal, which lasted more than two months, captured the world’s attention.

Maloney said he helped drill the hole that the miners came up through, as well as designed a capsule that could maneuver under ground to get the miners in and out. Credit for the design has gone to others, including NASA, but Maloney said he has now filed a patent.

The Chilean government spent millions on the rescue effort. But Maloney said he didn’t take anything but hospitalities like the plane tickets and food.

“I coulda,” Maloney said. “But I didn’t want to.”

The politician

Things changed after Bill returned from Chile.

Sen. Robert Byrd died in summer 2010. Then Joe Manchin left the Governor’s Office to go to Washington. So, there was going to be a special election to fill Manchin’s seat.

Bill said he ran into U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., at a mining industry event in Charleston in January 2011.

“What are you thinking?” Maloney recalled Capito asked.

“About what?” he said.

“Well, there’s a special election coming,” Maloney said the congresswoman said.

(A Capito spokesman said Maloney talked to Capito about running before 2011 and when Capito saw him at the event, she thought it was a good time to broach the subject again).

Maloney decided to run. He filed at the last minute.

Maloney came out of nowhere to upset former Republican Secretary of State Betty Ireland, one of the few Republicans to win a statewide office in recent memory. With a campaign led by a GOP operative with the knack for memorable attacks, Maloney turned Republicans from Ireland and commandingly won in a field of eight Republicans.

He lost narrowly to Tomblin last fall.

This year’s race has been something of a rerun. Maloney’s campaign tries to pin Tomblin with West Virginia’s endemic problems. The Tomblin campaign argues Tomblin has helped right the ship and Maloney is untested and inexperienced.

Maloney is working to change the outcome.

In releasing the letter, Bill Maloney commented, “As governor, I will support the use of our own West Virginia natural resources like coal and natural gas to grow jobs again.  We need to promote our own energy sources to ensure low-cost power that encourages new jobs in West Virginia.  Instead of begging for subsidies for alternative energy sources like wind, I will fight for coal and natural gas and the West Virginians that work to power America.  When the Charleston career politicians or the DC bureaucrats try to push their anti-coal, anti-natural gas agenda on West Virginia, I will proudly stand up to them and stand for West Virginians.”

The text of the letter is as follows:

Office of the Governor
1900 Kanawha Boulevard, East
Charleston, West Virginia 25305

Dear Gov. Tomblin,

I am writing this letter because of my concern regarding your energy policy that supports alternative energy over West Virginia coal and natural gas.

In 2009, you sponsored and passed House Bill 103 the Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Act. The bill requires power generation in West Virginia to decrease from over 97% from traditional coal power plants in 2009 to a maximum of 75% from traditional sources by 2025.  This is West Virginia’s version of the federal Cap & Trade bill. Recently, you incorrectly said in the Charleston Daily Mail editorial board meeting this bill will not limit the use of coal and natural gas in our state. More recently, you said in the gubernatorial debate this bill is not a state level version of Cap & Trade.  The bill clearly will limit the use of coal and natural gas in our state and it is a state level version of Cap & Trade.

Additionally, the law only allows natural gas to be used for 10% of the 25% overall mandate for alternative and renewable electricity.  In essence, even if power companies utilized natural gas for the majority of its power generation, the state of West Virginia would only recognize that it was generating 2.5% of its output using natural gas as an alternative fuel for the purpose of meeting the 25% overall alternative fuels mandate in the West Virginia cap-and-trade law. Our state is experiencing a natural gas boom.  We are discovering new deposits every day, and we are using new techniques to pump natural gas more efficiently.  Yet, you sponsored and supported a law that discourages the use of natural gas. When I’m Governor, I will repeal your West Virginia Cap & Trade bill that limits the use of coal and natural gas.

As you know, the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has stalled and is sitting on many coal permits. Your West Virginia Department of Environment Protection (DEP) is currently sitting on 800 coal mining permits. The federal government and your administration should issue these coal permits so West Virginia can start mining coal again.

To date, some states have filed over 20 different actions pushing back against the federal government.  Meanwhile, you have joined only one of four major environmental overreach lawsuits.  West Virginia joined 21 other states in the Utility MACT rule lawsuit, but failed to participate in the Transport Rule lawsuit, which has been struck down.  In addition, you chose not to participate in pending actions to stop the Endangerment Rule or the Tailoring Rule, both of which negatively impact West Virginia energy jobs. I am fighting to defeat President Obama’s re-election and I’ll fight back against the EPA’s overreach that is destroying our energy industry.

In 2011, you joined with the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition to write letters to President Obama and the United States Congress supporting wind energy. These letters encourage the promotion of wind energy through federal legislative and regulatory action. I have enclosed those letters herein.

The Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition’s stated purpose is to replace traditional energy sources such as coal and natural gas with wind energy. The information below can be found on the organization’s web site at the following web address http://www.governorswindenergycoalition.org/?page_id=73:

• Reduce electric-sector greenhouse gas emissions by about 25 percent, relative to a scenario with no new wind additions;
• Reduce electric-sector natural gas and coal consumption by 50 percent and 18 percent, respectively; and avoid construction of 80,000 MW of new coal plants;

Its name is poverty, and it has lived in West Virginia for many decades.

Democrats are comfortable with it. They hardly seem to notice it, and show no sense of urgency about getting rid of it.

That’s a disservice to the West Virginians state government is supposed to serve.

The race should be about which candidate would most aggressively seek the changes that would make it easier to create prosperity instead.

The Daily Mail endorses Republican businessman Bill Maloney because he is most likely to do that.

To be fair, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who has been in government for most of his adult life, is one of the modern Democratic leaders who inherited a fiscal mess and have tried to fix it.

Tomblin was part of the workers compensation solution. Rates are competitive now.

Tomblin has also worked to stabilize the state’s balance sheet, increase its reserves, improve its credit rating, and cut business taxes that have warded off businesses. The state hasn’t had a general tax increase in 17 years, and it is zeroing out the hated food tax.

These are significant accomplishments, and business groups rightly value Tomblin for that progress.

But there are lines Democrats will not cross for fear of offending their allies – state employees, unions and plaintiffs’ lawyers – and it shows.

The property tax on business equipment is not competitive, but will be hard to change. The legal climate could be improved, but Democrats balk at doing more.

This produces less investment and fewer opportunities for West Virginians, dependence, low teachers salaries, a degraded work force, outmigration, crumbling roads . . . The consequences are far-reaching.

Maloney would aggressively pursue better policies.

Tomblin’s supporters want to “stay the course.”

Maloney describes that course accurately: “We have an archaic tax code. We have the worst educational attainment in the nation. We’re 50th in college graduation rate. We’re 49th in job creation. We’re 50th in legal climate. . . . We’ve lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs.”

“We need to grow the [economic] pie. “We need less dependence, not more.”

Very true. It’s time to get the lead out and compete, as other states are. Maloney for governor.