DeFelice got something important right! One should research things that are said on the street and in the paper before believing. I wonder if he believed what was said during the last campaign by those who he is defending and their supporters. I am still looking for the billboards that Don Blankenship (Massey Energy's CEO and president) bought for me. I read about it in letters to the editor, heard it on the street, heard Delegate Mike Caputo accuse me of it on talk radio and remarkably it became fact in many peoples minds. However the billboards did not exist just as I have never been bought. The billboards supporting (former) Delegate Cindy Frich were procured and paid for by me.
DeFelice suggests we do our own research. I wonder if he researched how much money flowed into the campaign coffers of the delegates he defends and who gave it to them. I wonder then if anyone could have believed that I was bought, when the evidence points elsewhere. I was painfully out spent, so maybe I lost re-election because I have never been bought.
I wonder if he studied the money spent by out-of-state casino gambling interests, labor unions and the state Democratic Party to attack me, while these groups, along with trial lawyers kept other candidates flush with funds.
His research of my home rule letter seems to include conversations with Fleischaur about what transpired on the floor of the House of Delegates. As a former delegate, I have floor privileges and I was on the floor during those home rule debates and votes.
I wonder if he would ask Fleischaur about the $10,000 poll she did during the campaign that smeared me with lies, if she would continue to publically deny that it was her poll. She researched any lie she could think of against me to see if it would stick and turn the voters against me. It is amazing how some of the issues she polled against me were used by several PAC's (political action committee) as attacks against me through the mail. I sure hope she didn't share that $10,000 worth of polling results with those PACs because that is not legal.
There is much that occurs in Charleston that is unbelievable and some is unrepeatable. I was the legislator who tried to tell folks in the 44th House District the truth about what transpired in Charleston. I just wish I had the campaign finances to have told you more of the truth. Then I could still be acting upon it, as I had been, independent of special interests.
DeFelice is right, we must "weed out the falsities from the truth". He should also.
Cindy Frich
Morgantown