By Stephen Reed (Cross-posted from HuntingtonNews.Net)

Time was when a Democratic Congressman from West Virginia was locked in for life after one election. After getting elected through the pre-existing Democratic Party Machine, the franking privilege could kick in, telling constituents back home on a regular basis how their representative was “standing up for West Virginia, ” etc.

This was the way it worked 78 years and 39 elections, with rare exceptions. Former Bluefield Mayor Craig Hammond noted that West Virginia had the longest running one-party system in the world, even beating Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

And with similar results for the people, some would add.

But in recent times, we’ve seen some evidence of a two-party system, or at least dissatisfaction with that decrepit one-party system that seemed to only benefit party leaders and their friends. We’ve seen West Virginia go Republican three times out of three in recent Presidential elections, for example.

I knew something was up when I covered the first rally for George W. Bush at the statehouse lawn in Charleston as a reporter for Metronews. This was no mere “throng.” This was a huge event, with 5,000+ coming out to hear the Republican nominee for President. Similar overflow crowds would continue to greet Bush in repeated visits to West Virginia after he became President.

Then there was Brent Benjamin’s election to the Supreme Court for a full twelve-year term. Here was another example of something new in the air, because having a Republican elected to a full term on the WV Supreme Court was an unheard of event. Democratic Party leaders must have wondered what was going on here.

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But this year’s Congressional races in the First and Third Congressional Districts beat all. In the First Congressional District, Alan Mollohan not only has respectable Republicans vying for the chance to take on the incumbent after their GOP Primary in May, he also has a fire in his rear in the form of Senator Mike Oliverio (D-Monongalia) challenging his own party’s incumbent in the Democratic Primary.

The caliber of Mollohan’s challengers, Democrat and Republican, indicate that they smell opportunity in the air this year.

But the most telling sign of all is former Supreme Court Justice Elliot “Spike” Maynard changing parties from Democratic to Republican and throwing his hat in the ring for the Third Congressional District seat. He hopes to win the GOP Primary to take on Nick Joe Rahall, another “lifer” Congressman who has benefited over the years from simply having a “D” after his name.

Maynard has long been a conservative on social and business issues, and he has a certain political heft that Republicans will need to take out Rahall. Many Republicans are understandably thrilled to have a former Supreme Court Justice throwing in his lot with them against Rahall.

Having interviewed Maynard on one of my talk shows, I can tell you, this guy is both a Southern gentleman and a shrewd politician. He wouldn’t be getting in this hunt if he didn’t know that Rahall was vulnerable, after so many years in Washington.

So will the fever that hit Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago, providing a surprise result to another old-line Democratic state, come to West Virginia this election year?

Well, the bad news for Rahall and Mollohan may be that this kind of independent-mindedness, this willingness to give the Republicans a chance to redefine themselves, has already come to West Virginia in fits and starts. All the GOP primary winners have to do is follow the playbook of George W. Bush and Brent Benjamin to win.

The two-party system, long sought by generations of West Virginians from all parts of our state, is finally at hand.
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Stephen N. Reed is a former Metronews Capitol Correspondent and Charleston talk radio host, now living in the Eastern Panhandle.