On June 11, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Evan Jenkins made a decision on an issue that originally was decided almost 17 years ago.
Jenkins assigned Senior Status Judge Jim Rowe to preside over Wyoming Circuit Court until a permanent replacement can be selected. Rowe replaces Wyoming Circuit Judge Warren McGraw, who announced his retirement due to a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and being unable to continue his duties.
To someone who isn’t a student of West Virginia history or politics, this decision may have seemed perfunctory and with little fanfare. But it harkens back to a statewide campaign in 2004 for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals that The New York Times would later describe as “the nasty race in the nation.”
Having served in both the House of Delegates and state Senate, state Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw was first elected in 1998 and sought reelection in the infamous 2004 campaign for West Virginia’s highest court. Then-Justice McGraw was known as the darling of unions and plaintiff lawyers, who in those days were considered major political powerhouses in the Mountain State.
McGraw was not shy of his disdain for business and its leadership, especially in the coal industry, which had suffered under his rulings from both the bench and his votes as a lawmaker. His brother, then-West Virginia Attorney General Darrell “Judge” McGraw, had the same mentality and dislikes, as well as the same political adversaries.
Warren McGraw faced a well-funded and well-liked adversary in the Democratic Primary in 2004 with none other than Jim Rowe, who was a circuit judge in Greenbrier County.
Affable and smiling, Rowe was a stark contrast to Warren McGraw’s fire and brimstone rants from the campaign trail that often left one with concerns not only about McGraw’s electability, but also his sanity. While McGraw defeated Rowe by less than 35,000 votes, McGraw’s penchant for hyperbole and wild outbursts would come back to haunt him in the General Election.
McGraw would face political neophyte Brent Benjamin, who was introduced to West Virginia through a barrage of billboards with the text, “Who is Brent Benjamin?”
As McGraw’s opponent’s name identification soared, so did understandable questions about his identity. While the actual campaigns of McGraw and Benjamin spent modest money and did what they could, the real players in this race involved an all-out battle between two political armies, the unions and plaintiff bar on one side and the business groups and conservatives on the other, bolstered significantly by Massey Energy Chairman Don Blankenship, whose involvement included those many initial billboards and a carpet bombing of political advertising.
While both sides spent millions for the sake of their candidates, Benjamin won the race buoyed by the support of pro-business forces both from within West Virginia and beyond its borders who had tired of McGraw’s one-sided views from the bench. The final tally was a win by almost 50,000 more votes for Benjamin.
From a fictional John Grisham book to The New York Times description, the 2004 loss of Warren McGraw has been well documented and was a seminal time for West Virginia politics.
Pro-business groups came to realize that they had to win as Republicans, not with like-minded Democrats who could not survive a Democratic Primary unless your name is Joe Manchin.
Combined with the passing of longtime United States Senator Robert Byrd in 2010, the McGraw loss and subsequent Benjamin victory was another major crack in the formally impregnable armor of the West Virginia Democratic Party, which now finds itself in disarray with itself and subjugated to a superminority in both legislative houses without a single statewide elected official except for Supreme Court Justice Bill Wooten, who technically serves in a non-partisan role.
As to the wild outbursts that would come to haunt McGraw later in the campaign, we refer to the Rant in Racine, which is easy to find online. McGraw, after being followed by a tracker from his house to campaign stops, which is a common practice in other states, decided to share his displeasure with a crowd of unionists at a Labor Day rally in Racine in Boone County.
McGraw’s blurry tirade is punctuated with memorable moments that “they follow me” by people were “looking for ugly” that gave McGraw’s opponents the Howard Dean moment they needed.
At 82 years of age, we hope Warren McGraw can enjoy his retirement from the bench and wish him well with his battle against Parkinson’s disease, but we also hope Rowe enjoys his time finally filling the seat of the man he wanted to defeat in 2004.