Alex Mooney for Congress

I first met Alex Mooney (Dartmouth ’93) during the struggle to prevent the Dartmouth Trustees from eliminating the alumni’s right to select half of the Board. I knew Mooney by reputation as a staunchly conservative member of the Maryland State Senate from the western part of the state. His service there had already won him the Maryland Taxpayer of the Year award in 2000 and the National Hero of the Taxpayer Award for 2003.

In our work together, Alex lived up to his reputation as a conservative and a fighter. We became friends.

Having moved less than an hour’s drive across the border to West Virginia, Alex is now running for Congress. He seeks to represent West Virginia’s second congressional district.

This district, which runs all the way across the center of the state, has been represented for years by Shirley Moore Capito, a moderate Republican who is now running for the Senate. It’s a Republican district. George W. Bush and John McCain carried it comfortably and Mitt Romney won it even more convincingly.

Based on the fundraising numbers, there are three major candidates in the Republican primary: Mooney (who leads in fundraising), Charlotte Lane, and Ron Walters. Lane and Walters are moderates from the Charleston area in the western part of the state. Alex is a conservative from the eastern portion.

Lane, age 66, is a Charleston attorney who served on U.S International Trade Commission under President George W. Bush. Before that, she served in the House of Delegates on and off.

Lane has supported gun control and abortion rights in the past, according to an endorsement she received from the Charleston Gazette in 1996. Alex, by the way, has been endorsed by the Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund. He has also been endorsed by Citizens United Political Victory Fund.

Walters, age 29, is the son of a state delegate. He was a student until 2010. Since then, he has been a financial consultant.

According to West Virginians Against Law Suit Abuse, most of the contributions to Walters campaign have come from personal injury lawsuit interests. We certainly don’t need another congressman who is indebted to the trial lawyers bar.

The Buckley rule holds that conservatives should support the most conservative candidate who is electable. Alex meets that test. He’s more conservative than Lane and Walters and he seems electable in increasingly Red West Virginia (another conservative candidate in the race, Larry Faircloth, once referred to President Obama as “Sambo,” which raises questions not only as to whether he can be elected but whether he should be).

You can learn more about Alex from this National Review Online profile.

If you would like to contribute to Alex’s campaign, you can do so here.

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