Exposing Dirty West Virginia Politics

Political corruption including vote buying, rampant scandals and numerous ethics violations have been a huge part of West Virginia over the centuries and now all the gory details are offered in a 650-page book that has earned bipartisan praise.

Titled Don’t Buy Another Vote, I Won’t Pay for Landslide, the book features chapters on campaign corruption, from the presidential to local levels, imprisoned elected officials and politicians who illegally used public money for personal missions.

The author, an attorney who clerks for a state Supreme Court justice, concludes that West Virginia politics are the most corrupt in the nation. Examples range from a sitting governor who set up dummy corporations to funnel millions of dollars in flood money to a circuit judge convicted for buying and selling elected offices in his county. Chapter titles include; Corruption with a Capitol C; Bribery, Kickbacks and Conspiracy and Legally Buying Elections and Perceptions.

The lengthy list of charges against West Virginia’s elected officials during the last twenty years include stealing, cheating, gambling, bribery, ballot-box tampering, extortion, obstruction of justice and accepting illegal cash. These are just a few of the charges documented in the book.

One blog that recommends the book overall, warns that the author is a liberal who lets his politics show. It goes on to say that there is a tendency to magnify scandals involving Republicans when, the reality is, that widespread corruption in West Virginia has been almost exclusively a Democratic affair.