to Delegate John Doyle's campaign website.

For our responses to the attack ads being run against John Doyle, please see the "What's new" section below.

John is running for reelection as State Delegate of the 57th Delegate District, that includes Harpers Ferry, Bolivar, Bakerton, Shepherdstown, and Kearneysville. He has been a Jefferson County Delegate for the past fourteen years.

No freshman delegate can match John's ability to serve our district.

We Won!

John Doyle was reelected Delegate of the 57th
District. More local election results here.

Vote count, with all polling places reported,
on November 8, 2006

John Doyle 3447 - Bob Murto 2110
62% to 38%

To everyone who helped us with the campaign,
all of our generous donors,
and everyone who voted for John,

Thank you!

il election day.

He has targeted Delegate John Doyle (among others) for replacement. He has purchased anti-Doyle TV ads, mailers, and we're not sure what else. He is spending a lot of money to defeat John, supposedly "for the children."

Blankenship’s first mailer implies that John Doyle supports keeping West Virginia’s tax on food. His second mailer implies that John wants to reduce penalties for drunk driving.

This is baloney. John has publicly stated that he wants to eliminate the food tax, and find a fairer way to balance the budget. He helped to strengthen the law against drunk driving by voting to reduce the blood alcohol limit for drivers from .1 to .08.

The coal baron will probably shovel a few more misleading last minute ads attacking John Doyle into your mailbox and onto your television and radio. We won’t be able to respond to them all, nor should we need to. You can decide for yourself whether the coal baron is trying to defeat John Doyle to benefit Jefferson County, or to benefit his own pocketbook.

• About the "Drunk Driving" Attack Ads

Coal baron Don Blankenship is sponsoring ads that accuse John Doyle of trying to let drunk drivers get off easy. The ads are wrong and offensive.

Is there any justification for the ads? Well, the House of Delegates did indeed pass House Bill 4308, and the bill concerns drunk driving, and John Doyle was part of the majority of delegates who supported it. However, the bill does not reduce penalties for drunk driving, or raise the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers. It does not let drunk drivers off the hook. The bill just ensures that someone charged with drunk driving, who pleads "nolo contendere" (no contest), will be given an administrative hearing before a neutral magistrate. That's it. Bill 4308 just guarantees a hearing.

To read the bill itself, click here. The bill's legislative history is here. To read more about the plea of nolo contendere, click here.

Bill 4308 became necessary after the West Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles decided on its own to start interpreting a nolo contendere plea as a guilty plea. While the two pleas are similar, they are not quite identical, and never have been. The "nolo" plea has been a component of American Common Law from our nation's founding, and was part of English Common Law before that. The DMV simply does not have the authority to rewrite such settled law, and deprive citizens of their "due process." Bill 4308 made that clear to the DMV.

Two years ago John Doyle voted on REAL drunk driving legislation. The tougher .08 blood alcohol standard is now state law, in part because of John's vote.

So, has John Doyle really tried to let drunk drivers get off easy? The answer should be obvious.

Here's a harder, more important question:

Why is a coal baron inserting himself into Jefferson County politics by running offensive, misleading ads against our delegate?

• John Doyle raided the teachers' retirement fund!

Or so our opponent claims. This makes a nice soundbite, but the real story is more complicated.

The West Virginia teachers' retirement fund has the largest unfunded liability of any public employee retirement fund in the country. It is a very serious problem for the state. The shortfall is the result of mismanagement of the fund about 20 years ago, during a period when John Doyle was not in the legislature. From 1985 to 1989 teachers and other public employees were given enhanced retirement benefits instead of raises. At that time, paying for raises would have required a tax increase, but promising future benefits cost nothing. The governor and legislature decided that "costs nothing" sounded better than "tax increase." So, the unpleasantness of paying for the new benefits was pushed into the future.

A partial solution to the problem was attempted about ten years ago. A "defined contribution" teachers' retirement fund was created as an alternative to the original "defined benefit" fund. The new fund is still operating, and is fiscally sound.

Still, the substantial unfunded liability of the old fund was never solved. Now, the future has arrived, and with it the obligation to pay for those promised benefits.

The legislature was forced to make some hard choices. It simply had to find a way to pay for the the old fund. Combining the old and new funds was proposed as a possible partial solution.

Delegate Doyle initially opposed combining the funds, but in time he concluded that all the alternatives were worse. So, he reluctantly supported the legislation, which passed the House. In addition, during the past two years he has supported measures that should provide almost a billion dollars towards teachers' retirement. This difficult problem is slowly being solved.

As John expected, some beneficiaries of the new pension fund made legal objections to combining it with the old. The matter is now before the West Virginia Supreme Court. While John's opponents claim that the Supreme Court overruled the legislature's decision, that has not occurred. The court has simply held the fund combination in abeyance until it rules on the case.

The next time you hear John's political opponents refer to his "raiding the teachers' retirement fund," please listen carefully. Check whether or not they bother to mention the facts above, and whether or not they propose a better solution.