Hillbillies?
Is that what we are?
According to Google, nope. Although many folks from around the United States refer to West Virginians often as “hillbillies,” it is more reserved for the residents living in the mountains in western North Carolina.
Hoopie? Well …
”Hoopie” is a derogatory but usually good-natured name given to rural West Virginians (and sometimes Ohioans) who came north to work in the potteries of Chester and Newell, West Virginia, or East Liverpool, Ohio.
But W.Va. Sen. Ryan Weld, a Weirton native who now resides with his wife, Alex, in Wellsburg, believes residents in the Mountain State deserve a different moniker now that some economic corners have been turned.
“I believe the reputation of West Virginia should be the scrappy underdog because we’ve had some pretty good successes lately that probably have surprised a few people in the state and outside the state and maybe even the people who come up with all of those polls that have had West Virginia listed 49th or 50th,” Weld said. “I believe we’ll see those polls change in the future because of the success we have realized lately; I really do.
“I see more success in the future, too, and that’s why I feel the reputation of West Virginia should be of a state that has never given up and continues fighting,” the senator said. “We have lost a lot of people and a lot of business. We can’t hide those facts, but we have not lost our fight. We haven’t given up as a people. We tried something we thought worked for us, and now we’re trying something different, and we’re seeing a lot of positive things. We’re doing something about it, and I believe that says a lot about the people of our state.”
Letter of the Law
He joined the Air Force and was a captain before, as a reservist, he was deployed to Afghanistan during the War on Terror.
Upon his return, Weld attended law school at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and then became an assistant prosecuting attorney in Brooke County.
That is when the Republican’s phone rang.
“The person on the other end asked me if I wanted to run for a position in the House of Delegates, and that was the first time I had ever thought about running to be a lawmaker in the state of West Virginia,” Weld recalled. “I had not thought about running for such a position before that very moment. I was in law school, and I had been away for eight years while in the military serving our country, and that phone call came out of the blue.
“I was honored by the fact my name came up in conversations people were having at the time, but actually to get elected? I was in law school trying to survive so it was something I had not thought about at all,” he said. “I thought it was a possibility, I guess, I could get involved later in my life, but at that point in time I didn’t think I was ready. Other folks did, and here I am today representing people I have known my entire life.”
That was in 2013, and in 2014, Weld was elected to the House of Delegates, a chamber that includes 100 elected officials from around the state’s 55 counties. He defeated Democrat Phil Diserio by nearly 1,000 votes in a district once held tightly by the members of the Democratic Party.
In hindsight, it was the beginning of the end of the Democrats, a party that retained the majority in the House and Senate for 84 years. Weld, now nearly a decade later, now serves as the Majority Whip in the state Senate following his defeat of Jack Yost in 2016.
“And I could not think of a greater honor than being able to represent the people in the area where I grew up. I get calls about a lot of things that are actually outside the jurisdiction of what a state senator does, but the fact that people who need help feel as if they can reach out to me is something I take a lot of pride in,” Weld said. “That means a lot to me. The fact someone has an issue, and they believe I can help them means a lot because that means they know I am available to them when they feel they need to speak with me.
“That’s special. I grew up in Weirton until I was 6, and then we moved to Wellsburg, and those are the people I have known my entire life. Representing them and doing everything I can to make where they live the best it can be so their kids want to move back here is something I take very seriously,” he said. “They have entrusted me with that, and I take that very seriously every single day. It means everything to me.”
Owning It
pol·i·ti·cian – /ˌpäləˈtiSHən/
noun – a person who is professionally involved in politics, especially as a holder of or a candidate for an elected office.
That is the traditional definition. There also is this one:
pol·i·ti·cian – /ˌpäləˈtiSHən/
noun – a person who acts in a manipulative and devious way, typically to gain advancement within an organization.
There have been scandals, too, to support the latter distinctive, and the Ney-Abramoff fiasco of 2006 best serves local residents. Bob Ney, known as the “mayor” of the U.S. House of Representatives, was sentenced to 30 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and fined $6,000 in federal court in January 2007.
According to the press release from the Department of Justice, Ney admitted he engaged in a conspiracy beginning in approximately 2000 and continuing through April 2004, wherein he corruptly solicited and accepted a stream of things of value from Jack Abramoff, Abramoff’s lobbyists, and a foreign businessman, in exchange for agreeing to take and taking official action to benefit Abramoff, his clients, and the foreign businessman.
Ney was a politician who cast a dark shadow on those who choose to serve without similar criminal activity.
Weld, though, does not run from the term.
“I think anyone who is elected to office is a politician. I’m not afraid of that term because it’s the truth,” Weld explained candidly. “Whatever you want that term to mean is what you make of it. So, do you make it about service, or do you make it by climbing the ladder and always looking for the next headline? I see it as a job to do for the people who voted for me to serve in that position.
“So, yes, I am a politician because I have a job to do for the people in the 1st District,” he said. “They make the job description, and sometimes it changes from day to day and month to month, and that’s OK because if I can help the people in my District, that’s exactly what I am going to do.”
