Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority. - William Jennings Bryan

Monday, January 09, 2006

An Amount of Clarification

The guy who runs SW Virginia Law Blog, a guy named Steve Minor (hey! I passed his office the other day!), made mention of my most recent post here. He makes mention that I say "all the elected officials in Bristol are Democrats but for the Commonwealth's attorney." Perhaps clarification is needed.

First, we can establish that Mayor Paul Weberling is a Democrat, as is Councilman Harold Leonard and Sheriff Jack Weisenburger. As for all the other Constitutional officers, when I worked the polls this past November, handing out the sample ballots printed by the BVDC, the names of Jack Weisenburger, Terry Frye, and Wilma Gill were all marked (along with Kaine-Byrne-Deeds, of course). The only city official on the ballot whose name was not marked, but was on the Republican sample ballot, was Commonwealth's Attorney Jerry Wolfe. His predecessor, Larry Kirksey, now a judge, was also a Republican (and, as an interesting side note, I think his law office was where Steve Minor's law office is now--let me know if I'm wrong).

As for the School Board, one member of the city school board is also a teacher at the high school I attend (I go to school in the county, and he teaches there because if one is on the school board, they apparently can't teach in that jurisdiction), and I know him to be an avid Democrat.

So, while I cannot say for certain that "all the elected officials in Bristol are Democrats but for the Commonwealth's attorney," we can safely say quite a few are.

(Also, I liked the title of his post: "Today Bristol, tomorrow the world"; I wouldn't go that far. More like "Today Bristol, Several years from now, the City Council")

-Neal

1 comment:

Steve Minor said...

Going way, way back, Judge Kirksey and indeed Judge Flannagan occupied some of what is now our building back in the Woodward, Miles days - before I was a lawyer and before Neal was anything.

Judge Kirksey had an office in the space now occupied by the Commonwealth's attorney but that was on up the street a little ways.