MORGANTOWN — Mark Brazaitis, whose first stint as a Morgantown City Councilor has been marked by spats with Monongalia County commissioners and WVU, plans to stage a write-in candidacy for the U.S. Senate.
It’s another unconventional twist in a race between Democrat incumbent Joe Manchin and Republican challenger Patrick Morrisey. GOP primary third-place finisher Don Blankenship hopes to appear on the ballot as the Constitution Party candidate, though the legality of that maneuver is dubious under the state’s “sore loser law.”
Brazaitis calls for progressive measures and doesn’t consider the 70-year-old Manchin “a real Democrat.”
“I will be the first write-in candidate to win a seat in the U.S. Senate from West Virginia because, as a real Democrat, I will be running against two (and maybe three) Republicans. West Virginia needs a real Democrat in the Senate,” he said.
His platform includes calls for a $700 billion bill “to revive Appalachia” with infrastructure improvements, incentivized organic farms, renewable energy sites and wide-scale production of marijuana.
“Is $700 billion too large a number? Hardly. It is the same dollar figure as the 2018 annual budget of the U.S. Department of Defense, absent the additional $61 billion Congress handed over to big fat-cat defense contractors,” Brazaitis said.
The West Virginia University professor and fiction author also pitched his so-called Empower our Empowers Act, in which the U.S. government would grant $50,000 in reparations to any man, woman, or child in the region who “over the last 80 years, has gone to a doctor for treatment of an illness related to their service in the fossil-fuel industry.”
In his Universities are Universities Act, Brazaitis criticized his employer for “greed” and called for a suspension on public-private partnerships in publicly funded institutions of higher learning across the country. “Universities should not be rogue Fortune 500 companies,” he said.
A 10-percent raise for all teachers is another tenet of Brazaitis’ write-in platform, along with universal health care, a $15 minimum wage, full funding of Planned Parenthood and a ban on assault weapons.
The announcement comes after a whirlwind two months for Brazaitis, starting with the city’s announcement at the end of May that it intended to purchase the Haymaker Forest, a move Brazaitis made a plank of his council candidacy.
When public outcry over the $5.2 million asking price and $2.5 million appraised value forced the city to reconsider — and talking points pivoted from Haymaker Forest to funding for the city’s parks — the deputy mayor’s rhetoric in the press, online and in public forms became more pointed.
He’s claimed WVU is “gutting” Morgantown and has asked the university to fund a new library for the city and provide $40 million for BOPARC. He called the development of a $45 million track and aquatic center at Mylan Park “a tragedy” for Morgantown because it is being developed privately outside the city.
Most recently, Brazaitis began targeting fellow Democrats at all levels of government, calling for a purge of the party in order to make room for “actual progressives.”
His actions have not gone unnoticed by the Democrat Party or his fellow council members. In particular, his recent presentation of an $8.5 million levy for consideration by the Monongalia County Commission to build a new BOPARC ice rink rankled some on council as both BOPARC and city council elected to not move forward in pursuit of a November levy.
Brazaitis said the presentation was not made in his role as deputy mayor.
