Published: November 07, 2008 11:16 pm      

After latest setback, Weeks says he’s done with politics

Russ Weeks is through with politics after being dealt his latest setback, and there is nothing anyone can say or do that is going to change his mind.

Put that in cement.

And that means you won’t see the former Republican state senator going after Sen. Mike Green, D-Raleigh, the man who upended him two years ago for the 9th District seat.

“I don’t know why anybody would get out here and expose himself to this kind of a life and take all that heat,” Weeks said Friday, three days after Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin bulldozed his way into a second term.

“You’ve got to have pretty thick skin to go through this.”

Manchin corralled 486,461 votes, or 70 percent, to 179,566 for Weeks, or 26 percent. Mountain Party nominee Jesse Johnson collected 31,088 votes, or 4 percent.

Weeks failed to carry a single county, despite an exhaustive campaign that took him into every pocket of the state, and in his home county of Raleigh, the margin was 15,580 to 11,504.

In the two more populous counties, Weeks ran a feeble second. Kanawha handed the incumbent 54,565 votes to 20,430, and Manchin’s victory margin in Cabell was 26,655 to 6,569.

Weeks says he isn’t bitter about the outcome, but keenly disappointed in how the news media in West Virginia virtually ignored him almost from the get-go.

Two reporters candidly told him they looked at the lopsided amount of money Manchin was pouring into the race, contrasted with the anemic war chest of Weeks, and immediately just wrote off the Republican challenger’s campaign, Weeks said.

“They put everything on the money,” he said. “So I didn’t get the coverage. And here in a state where it’s so heavily one part, when we do get somebody to run, we need media help. The press is supposedly the neutral guardian of the First Amendment.”

Without media coverage to get a message out and cover serious issues he raised, Weeks said a poor candidate unable to buy advertising as Manchin did is handicapped, and the race becomes tilted in the direction of the well heeled majority party.

Even with the press largely turning its back on the race, Weeks was confident he could pull off the same kind of David vs. Goliath upset he had done in 2002, when former Senate Judiciary Chairman Bill Wooton fell victim to his darkhorse campaign.

“I did,” he said when asked if earnestly felt the Governor’s Mansion could be won.

“I really did. People would come up to me during my tour around the state. Some of them heard about me and knew what I wanted to do. Others, when they were through talking with me, seemed to be convinced (that change was needed). The receptions I got were just so overwhelming. And the e-mails, the phone calls I would get from people in and out of government. I knew that even if I didn’t get it, it would be a whole lost closer.”

Weeks said the lopsided outcome came as a surprise.

For the retired sailor who had gone through the fire as a river boat pilot in the murderous Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War, the campaign trail was less taxing but costly in one respect — he logged some 27,000 miles on his car when gas averaged about $3.60 a gallon.

Weeks praised his loyal supporters from both parties for financial and spiritual aid.

“You can’t just thank them enough, the people who worked behind the scenes,” he said.

Weeks campaigned hard on reform, especially in the realm of taxes, and accused Manchin of cronyism and corruption, often suggesting he had a hand in getting his daughter Heather an unearned master’s degree in business at WVU. The issue caused some consternation across the state and figured in a series of four debates. Manchin insisted when asked repeatedly about daughter that he had nothing to do with the degree.

For now, Weeks plans to get his leaves raked and tend to some neglected tasks around the house that were put on the back burner while he was out campaigning.

And he can reflect on what he insists was his last hurrah in politics.

“I don’t know what went wrong,” he said.

“We thought we were doing everything right. We were doing as best we could with what little bit of money we could.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com