AFFLICTING THE COMFORTABLE: JOURNALISM AND POLITICS IN WEST VIRGINIA

16. Going to Press

Chapter 16 GOING TO PRESS I HAD BARELY FINISHED the first of a four-part series on the Invest Right story when I learned that efforts were being made to stop publication before it even reached the Gazette copy desk. Hoffmann called and said, "They're trying to kill it." I hadn't told anybody that I had actually begun writing, and I was doing the writing at home. Hoffmann hadn't breathed it to anyone either, other than pOSSibly his wife, Veronica. It was clear to me, as well as to my editor, that word had leaked back from Florida and Elkins that I had been asking some hard questions, and the assumption in the political community was that the story was about to hit the streets. With the information I had in hand, the Invest Right story didn't appear to be anything earthshaking. After two years of investigation I still didn't believe that I had found my "smoking gun," the analogy that would later be used in the Watergate mess. And I hadn't quite tied Governor Barron into the kickback scheme. But nobody on the outside knew this. They only knew that an important election was days away, and the Democratic candidate, Hulett Smith, was ahead in the polls by a slim margin. But Smith had stumbled badly during a question-and-answer session on statewide television with his Republican opponent , former Governor Cecil Underwood. His backers were fearful that my Invest Right series might tip the scales against the Democrats on election day. Apparently it wasn't enough for Democratic Party officials that I had already exposed the state's loss of millions of dollars in highway funding during the Underwood administration. Penalties of almost $9 million had been CHAPTER SIXTEEN assessed on road construction projects receiving federal matching funds. Among the projects racking up penalties was a section of 1-64, which was routed around the Guyan Country Club in Huntington where Underwood was a member. It cost the state almost a million dollars to divert the road around club property for the purpose of saving two greens, two tees, and a fairway. I had pursued this story for months but wasn't able to pull all the facts together until I had the opportunity to sit down with Road Commissioner Burl Sawyers and U.S. Senator Jennings Randolph, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on roads. The overall impact of the penalties was even greater, according to Sawyers and Randolph. By having to absorb this added expense into an already tight Highways Department budget, West Virginia would lose the ability to match as much as $80 million in additional federal money. Smith and his organization wanted a clear path to the finish line on election day. They were tickled pink when stories appeared that were critical of Underwood and the Republicans, but they wanted nothing said that might implicate their Democratic friends in the Barron administration. It was "politics as usual," but it disturbed me. I remembered the night some seven years before when I sat down in a secluded section of the Charleston Press Club with Smith; his wife, Mary Alice; UPI writer Bill Barrett and his wife, Melba, who also happened to be Hulett's secretary; and Jim Harris, who later became administrative assistant to Senator Randolph. That evening Smith told us, "I'm going to run for governor in the next election, and I'm asking you to help me." Hulett had risen from political obscurity to statewide prominence in 1956 as campaign manager for Congressman Robert Mollohan during his bid for the governorship. Mollohan wasn't destined to realize his dream. The deal Mollohan made to allow strip-mining on state property at Pruntytown while he was serving as superintendent of the Boys' Industrial School was more than the voters would accept. Smith had not been seriously damaged by this disclosure, although the Democratic Party lost control of the Statehouse for the first time in twenty-four years. Despite a move by some Democrats to oust him from the state party chairmanship, a perk awarded Smith after Mollohan GOING TO PRESS 179 won the primary, Smith managed to hang on. He was instrumental in helping the party regain a measure of its old vitality in the off-year elections two years later, and by 1960 he was a factor to be reckoned with when he announced his...