Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who had consistently maintained a double-digit lead throughout the campaign, won the Democratic nomination for governor of West Virginia in Saturday’s special gubernatorial primary.
Tomblin, a fiscal conservative who took over as governor when two-term Democratic governor Joe Manchin replaced the late Robert C. Byrd in the U.S. Senate, received more than forty percent of the vote, easily outdistancing House of Delegates Speaker Rick Thompson, his closest rival, in a field featuring no fewer than six candidates.
Incomplete returns show Tomblin — the longest-serving Senate President in West Virginia history — with 49,383 votes, or nearly 41 percent. Thompson, who finished the campaign with a flurry of last-minute television ads and enjoyed the support of most of the state’s labor unions, including the 75,000-member West Virginia AFL-CIO, was trailing with 29,046 votes, or 24 percent.
Secretary of State Natalie E. Tennant, who had been endorsed by Emily’s List, was trailing in third place with 21,397 votes.
Bill Maloney, who helped develop the drilling technique that led to the rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners last October, hopes to become the first Republican governor of West Virginia in more than a decade.
Four-term state Treasurer John Perdue, who railed against high utility rates while accusing the state’s Public Service Commission of rubber stamping unnecessary rate hikes, finished fourth in the crowded field with about 15,403 votes, while Jeffrey V. Kessler of Glen Dale, who succeeded Tomblin as Senate president, had a disappointingly negligible 6,658 votes.
Flooding and poor weather conditions were expected to delay the results in some parts of the state.
Bill Maloney, a wealthy Morgantown drilling consultant waging his first campaign for public office, swept past former Secretary of State Betty Ireland to win the Republican nomination. With 93 percent of the precincts reporting, Maloney had 45 percent of the vote to Ireland’s 31 percent. Six other candidates trailed far behind.
Ireland, the first woman elected Secretary of State of West Virginia — a post she won by narrowly defeating 88-year-old Ken Hechler in 2004 — was considered the early frontrunner in the Republican contest, but had difficulty building the kind of war chest necessary to advertise extensively on television.
Tomblin and Maloney will square off in the October 4 special election. The race will also feature the Mountain Party’s Bob Henry Baber, a poet and former mayor of Richwood who was selected as that party’s nominee earlier this month.
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