Coming on the heels of this morning’s news that Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) will not be a candidate in the special election for the late Robert Byrd’s
“„“This is a case not only of the operator thumbing his nose at the strictly legal requirements and regulations,” Ken Hechler, former West Virginia congressman who was lead sponsor of a 1969 law that overhauled mining safety, said this week in a phone interview. “It also involves a failure of the Mine Safety and Health Administration itself to act aggressively against the mine in order to ensure that either the conditions be made safe, as provided in the law, or to toughen the enforcement … to close the mine.”
“„“I don’t want to make it a campaign against Gov. Manchin,” Hechler said this morning, speaking on the phone from New York, where he is doing a series of public lectures. “I want to make it about mountaintop removal. A vote for me is not a vote for Ken Hechler – it’s tantamount to a vote against mountaintop removal.”