Capito and Tennant go head-to-head in U.S. Senate debate

Familiar themes from the campaign surfaced when U.S. Senate candidates Shelley Moore Capito and Natalie Tennant met Tuesday night for their only head-to-head debate.

Capito, the Republican 2nd District Congresswoman, said many policies of President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would continue to harm West Virginia if Tennant is elected.

“This race is about West Virginia’s future,” Capito said. “Whether we’re going to continue to have Washington pick winners and losers, of which we’re losers, or are we going to elect United States senators that are going to fight for us.”

Tennant, the Democrat Secretary of State, contended she valued fighting for West Virginia over political connections with the current administration.

“This race is about West Virginia, not Obama, not Harry Reid. They are not on the ballot,” she said. “I am on the ballot and Congresswoman Capito is running against me.”

Another topic was Tennant’s handling of the ballot controversy involving the House of Delegates’ 35th District race in Kanawha County. After Republican candidate Suzette Raines dropped out. Tennant said the decision to not fill the ballot with a fourth GOP candidate was made by the bipartisan State Election Commission based.

“We looked at the evidence that was out before us, we studied it, we questioned, we debated, we asked questions to those who chose to come to the SEC meeting and we made a decision based on what we had,” she said. “The Supreme Court said that we did not get it right.”

After the state Supreme Court voted 5-0 that the commission should have allowed Republicans to fill the open ballot spot, the Secretary of State’s Office announced it would pay for the reprinting of the 55,000 ballots.

Capito was critical of Tennant’s leadership in the incident: “The Supreme Court basically told the Secretary of State, who’s the chief elections officer of the state, that she got it wrong, blatantly wrong and it was obviously for political reasons. So now she’s saying that the ballots are being reprinted and she’s going to absorb the cost. Where does she get her budget? That’s the taxpayers.”

Tennant supported her recent campaign ad alleging ethical misconduct by the congresswoman. The ad claims that Capito, as a member of the Financial Services Committee, personally benefited during the financial crisis by providing her husband with insider information.

“Congress has access to information that regular West Virginians don’t have access to,” Tennant said. “The fact is that during the financial crisis, West Virginians were losing their retirement, they were losing their savings and their homes and Congresswoman Capito was making money.”

With her opponent trailing in the polls, Capito dismissed the critique as a desperation play.
“I’ve built 18 years of trust with West Virginians,” she said. “They know me. They know my family.”


The election is Nov. 4.