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To the editor:
I'm a Democrat in Ohio. The West Virginia governor's race doesn't impact my life, but I have friends and family in the Mountain State who I want the best for. To that end, I wish there was a viable Democrat running to replace Jim Justice as governor, but there simply isn't. Let's face it, the only things the lone Democrat vying for office, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams, have going for him is he's a native son with governing experience and he's not a nepo-baby. But he's probably going to lose to either notorious carpetbagger from Brooklyn (yes, that Brooklyn,) Patrick Morrissey, or some legacy with minimal government record named Capito.
Of course, there's also the chance a guy named Chris Miller, who looks like if Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Seinfeld had a lovechild, could get the Republican nomination and beat our boy, Steve. But for the sake of all that's good and holy, let's hope not.
What's Miller's platform? Well apparently, judging by his huge ad buy, he's running on the facts he doesn't like trans people and he thinks patriotism should be taught in elementary school. Oh, and how he doesn't understand what critical race theory is and neither do you and how that's a good thing?
He's not campaigning on how he'll fix West Virginia's problems, like how the state ranks 47th in both economy and education, 41st in natural environment and dead last in both health care and infrastructure, (Thanks, Baby Dog.) Rather, he campaigns about how he'll drug test welfare recipients to save money, a policy that's proven time-and-again to cost more than it could ever possibly save.
But getting back to Miller's other two pet issues, trans folk and patriotism k/12: Is it really a good thing to make patriotism a mandatory graded part of the curriculum? Well, they do it in North Korea and China; so, I guess if that's what you want your kids learning rather than STEM, grammar, and critical thinking. Why bother learning the lessons of history when you're already repeating the worst of it?
Which brings me to his anti-trans ad. In it, he asserts that he wouldn't want his daughter sharing a bathroom with a "biological" man. Ignoring for the moment that a girl is far more likely to be assaulted by a cis-man than one who identifies as LGBTQ, why would you force a male transitioning to female with breasts and wearing makeup and behaving in a way that says "woman" to use a man's bathroom? And who is going to police it? Who is Miller putting on genital check?
But the best/worst part of his ad is the last line. After asserting that girls' locker rooms are for girls, Miller begins a new sentence saying, "I'm Chris Miller, and they'll stay that way when I'm governor." If he cared more about trad grammar education than trad gender roles, maybe he'd realize that he just proclaimed his pronouns to be they/them.
Think about it, then vote Williams.
J. David Core
Toronto