October 13, 2012
VIENNA- With a little more than three weeks left before the 2012 general election, Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Maloney campaigned in the Mid-Ohio Valley Friday.
Maloney met with volunteers at the party headquarters and helped reach out to local voters at the party’s phone bank.
Maloney ran against Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin in 2011 to fill the vacancy left by Gov. Joe Manchin’s resignation after his election to fill the unexpired term of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, who died on June 28, 2010. Tomblin won the special election 49.6 percent to 47 percent.
Maloney said there are choices in 2012.
“There is a clear choice here,” he said. “You can have either more of the same or go in a different direction. There is a bright future in store for West Virginia.”
Maloney said the state needs changes to create an atmosphere for job creation. Maloney, who was born in Syracuse, N.Y., said he spent his entire adult life in West Virginia. He said ads about his background were designed to confuse voters.
“You can’t choose where you are born but you can choose where you will live, raise a family and start a business,” he said. “This is where I have spent my entire adult life. I love West Virginia, I want to make it a better place.”
Maloney said the current administration joined only one action against the EPA concerning MACT, or Maximum Achievable Control Technology, with 21 other states, and did not join action against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.”
“We have to be proactive and we need to assert our state’s rights,” he said. “The federal government’s overeach is out of control.”
Maloney said he believes more regulations will come on mining, fracking and farming.
On health care Maloney said he would like to see the health care act repealed.
“We need some common sense; it’s the biggest tax increase in history,” he said. “We need some common sense solutions to health care that make sense, not a bill no one read.”
Maloney said his campaign recently brought in Maine Gov. Paul LePage, who refused to enforce EPA regulations against snowmobile use on the Appalachian Trail.
“LePage said if you tell them ‘no’ they will back down,” he said. “We need to do that here; what does the EPA have anything to do with us mining our coal, producing our power and using that power to manufacture things right here,” Maloney said.
