Yesterday afternoon, one of President Biden’s Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ nominees, Sarah Bloom Raskin, withdrew her name for consideration. The event happened early enough in the day that today’s Wheeling Intelligencer ran an AP article on her decision on page 8:

Embattled Federal Reserve Pick Raskin Withdraws Nomination

Given what happened yesterday, today’s editorial page features a surprising op-ed by local congressman David McKinley:

Raskin Is Wrong for the Fed

The op-ed’s relevance has clearly expired, so why was it published?

Some possibilities:

1. The editor was unaware that Raskin withdrew. Unlikely (wouldn’t he/she have seen page 8), but possible.
2. The editor had already laid out the editorial page and was not about to remake it just because an op-ed was now irrelevant. Possible.
3. Most likely: Given the way our local papers have overwhelmingly supported McKinley’s candidacy for the WV district 2 congressional nomination with frequent editorials, articles, and op-eds, this column was written after Raskin’s departure and printed to make McKinley look good for questioning Raskin’s nomination.
   

Here's my blog’s experience with eight years’ worth of McKinley op-eds:

• They first show-up elsewhere. (WV News, the Parkersburg News-Sentinel, for examples.) Search engines suggest no other source for today's op-ed.

• A McKinley op-ed can always be found under “opinion” on the Intelligencer’s web page. As of 1 PM, McKinley’s op-ed is not on the site. This is most likely its first publication.

Additionally:

• The op-ed appears to have been hastily thrown together and not especially well-written as McKinley skips from point-to-point.

• There is nothing new in McKinley’s op-ed; it’s a rehash of old McKinley talking points on the Green New Deal, inflation, electric cars, and just about every Republican grievance against the president.

What McKinley writes is predictable and irrelevant. That probably doesn’t matter to the Intelligencer; its publication was simply to aid his reelection.