We really like State Sen. John Unger here in the Eastern Panhandle.
He’s done a great job at the State House. Now we’re hoping Unger runs for Congress to represent us in the House of Representatives.
Here’s 5 reasons why he’d make a great representative for West Virginia’s District 2.
(Public domain photo from the West Virginia legislature site.)
* He’s a Rhodes Scholar and a Truman Scholar as well as the first in his family to graduate from college. It’d be nice to have a Congressional representative in WV-02 who was highly intelligent.
* He worked with Mother Teresa to help the poor.
In Calcutta, the work was long and back breaking, but Unger found it very rewarding until about six months in. It was then that a monsoon swept through the City of Joy, where he was working. Mother Teresa put him in charge of a six block radius coordinating relief efforts. But try as he might, he was overwhelmed. Finally he went to his mentor with a confession. “Mother, I don’t think I’m making a difference. Maybe you need to find someone else.” Mother Teresa smiled at him and said “God does not call us to do great things, but small things with great love.” He has tried to live by those words ever since.
* He did extremely well against Republican candidate Jerry Mays despite the fact Mays received considerable support from the Martinsburg Journal and coal baron Don Blankenship. Despite the odds, Unger received 19,640 votes in Berkeley and Jefferson counties to Mays 10,790. Unger won despite being in heavily Republican counties. (PResident George W. Bush won Berkeley 21,293 to Senator John Kerry’s 12,224 and Jefferson 10,059 to 9,301).
* He’s effective. In seven years, he’s had more than 230 of his bills passed.
* He already has an extensive background in how the federal goverment works (he worked with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory on homeland security and economic development issues) and international affairs (he’s worked with refugees from Vietnam in Hong Kong and for the International Rescue Committee as well as Kurdish refugees in southern Turkey and northern Iraq after the first Gulf War).
Let’s compare his biography to his potential opponent’s Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (Rubberstamp Republican).
From her own web site:
Before beginning her years of public service, Capito worked as a career counselor at West Virginia State University and as the Director of the Educational Information Center for the West Virginia Board of Regents. Her volunteer activities include being a Past President and Board Member of the YWCA, a member of the Community Council of the Kanawha Valley, and a member of the West Virginia Interagency Council for Early Intervention. She has also been an active participant in Read Aloud and Habitat for Humanity.
Capito graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in Zoology, and also holds a M.Ed. from the University of Virginia.
What her bio leaves out is that she first won office in 1996 to the House of Delegates riding the coat-tails of her father, former Gov. Arch Moore and maintained her office through the political machine her father built and through receiving huge campaign donations from the political machine built by Tom Delay (her fundraising has plummeted since he left Congress).
When you compare Unger’s life and work experiences to Capito’s, it’s easy to see why we’d rather have Unger representing us in WV-02.
Someone like Unger could do a good job reconnecting this district with its Democratic roots on the Federal level. I hope he jumps into the race and corrects the Capito abherration.
See posts at West Virginia Blue with John Unger tag as well as posts in our archives (our old blogger site).