In August, I highlighted an excellent article in the Charleston Gazette-Mail that examined, with some depth, the views of Republican incumbent, David McKinley, and the Democratic challenger, Kendra Fershee. Of course, the G-M is not located in the First District, but it was still far superior to anything that has been published in our local Ogden newspapers.

Yesterday, West Virginia University’s student newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum, published a long article detailing some of the two candidate’s views:

McKinley, Fershee talk election with a month until vote

The paper’s news editor, Joe Severino, spoke with both candidates last weekend. The 1500-word article covered a range of issues and highlighted their differences. Since District 1 voters get very little information on the Democratic candidate’s viewpoints* from our local “newspapers,” I recommend the Anthenaeum article as well as the previously mentioned Gazette-Mail article.

Additionally, I would call attention to McKinley’s response on why no debate has been scheduled between the candidates:

As of press time Sunday evening, a debate for the 1st District had not been scheduled. Both candidates said their constituents deserve at least one debate, but McKinley said no “credible” third-party has asked to hold one.

“No credible group has ever said ‘we want to host a debate,’” he said. “There have been the Democratic Women’s Club of respective counties that would like to host, but that’s not an objective group, [it’s] a biased group. You get an unbiased group, a newspaper group to be able to put that on, why not?”

(An “unbiased” newspaper group, congressman? That would rule out Ogden Newspapers.)

Which brings up the larger question, where are the Ogden newspapers? Ogden had no problem sponsoring a Spring debate among the Republican senatorial candidates and they were to co-sponsor one of the proposed U.S. Senate debates. And while I have not pinned it down, it would appear that they are also sponsoring the debate in West Virginia’s state senatorial district between Republican Ryan Ferns and Democrat William Ihlenfeld. Obviously, Ogden Newspapers are only willing to sponsor a debate when the Republican candidate has something to gain.

*It should be noted that on September 22, Wheeling papers ended over three months of ignoring candidate Fershee by covering one of her local town halls. The article did mention that Fershee discussed several topics. However, the bulk of the article focused on the abortion topic as the headline suggested:

House Candidate Fershee Voices Pro-Choice Stance

I was not there but the four commenters at the bottom of the article did not think that the reporter, Joselyn King, did a fair job of reporting what Fershee discussed. Here’s what one wrote:

I attended this town hall. From this article, it’s hard to tell if this reporter was actually there.

Reproductive rights, while important, were a discussion of a few minutes, while jobs, healthcare for everyone, student loans, public funds being diverted to charter schools, funding for community college, raising the minimum wage, and dark money influencing elections were discussed in detail.