Dana Lynch Wins House of Delegate Seat

Webster County Assessor Dana Lynch, a Democrat, will serve as the County's new House of Delegate member after defeating his Republican opponent, Robert Karnes, in Tuesday's general election.

Dana Lynch, House of Delegate member-elect

The House of Delegate District 44 comprises all of Webster County, and parts of Upshur, Randolph, and Nicholas Counties. 

Lynch received 3,329 votes to Karnes' 2,227 votes, or a 60% to 40% margin of victory.

Interestingly, Lynch had a 1,035 vote lead with all 14 of Webster's precincts reporting, but only increased his final lead over Karnes by an additional 67 votes when the precincts from the other three counties were tallied.  Lynch's two year term begins January 1, 2013.

1,834 Webster Households Still Without Power

Route 15, approaching Miller Mountain, 10-30-12

As of 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 7, 2012, First Energy (parent of Monongahela Power) reports on their outage website that 1,834 households in Webster County are still without power, which number is down from the 2,315 reported without power on November 6, 2012 at 8:00 a.m.

Bender Wins in Landslide

(l. to r.) Retired Sheriff Jerry Hamrick, Interim Sheriff Jeffrey Hayhurst, and Sheriff-Elect David Bender.  The Sheriff's office has certainly increased in stature as a result of the election.  :)

BREAKING NEWS: Bender Elected Sheriff; Other Local Results

Clerk Terry Payne at the tabulating machine at 8:50 p.m.

As of 9:53 p.m., 14 of Webster County's 14 precincts have delivered their ballots to the Clerk for tabulation, and 14 of 14 precincts have been tabulated, as shown below.

A total of 2,849 votes were cast in Webster County.  Here are the actual elections results released by County Clerk Terry Payne (in the contested races only--please note that for all offices except Webster Sheriff, the results are for Webster County only and do not include results from other counties):

Webster Sheriff

Rick Thomas   597

David Bender  2,012

WV House of Delegates            WV State Senate
Robert Karnes  844                   Clark Barnes            1,291
Dana Lynch     1,879                  Margaret Beckwith   1,257

U.S. President
Mitt Romney      1,708
Barrack Obama   939

U.S. Senate                            U.S. House of Representatives
John Raese           887               Rick Snuffer           915
Joe Manchin III    1,741             Nick J. Rahall II      1,768

WV Governor                          WV Secretary of State
Bill Maloney        1,017               Brian Savilla       682
Earl R. Tomblin   1,626               Natalie Tenant    1,995

WV Auditor                            WV Treasurer

Larry Faircloth    774                  Mike  Hall     832

Glen Gainer         1,791               John Perdue   1,772

WV  Agriculture Comm'r         WV Attorney General

Kent Leonhardt    772                  Patrick Morrisey        1,030

Walt Helmick       1,886               Darrell McGraw, Jr.   1,166

WV Supreme Court

John Yoder       922

Allen Loughry   732

Latisha Chafin   1,118

Robin J. Davis   1,214

Ballot Amendment (Repeal Sheriff's Term Limit)

For          880

Against    977

Local Election Updates

On Tuesday evening, the Commentator will be camped out at the Webster County Courthouse tabulating local election returns for the County.  Stay tuned to the Commentator for updates throughout the evening on all contested races.

Many in Webster County Still Without Power After 8 Days

According to the First Energy website (parent company of Monongahela Power), an estimated 2,315 customers in Webster County are still without electric power.  The website claims that almost all customers will have their power restored by midnight on Friday, November 9, 2012,
Here is a link to the website to check on outages:
http://outages.firstenergycorp.com/mdwv.html

At 8:00 a.m. on November 6, 2012, here are the number of customers in these zip codes that are without power:

26288:  739 (Webster Springs)
26206:  318 (Cowen)
26222:  349 (Hacker Valley)
26208:  292 (Camden on Gauley)
26217:  224 (Diana)
26298:  200 (Bergoo)
26203:  122 (Cleveland)
26215:  71   (Erbacon)

Here is a screenshot of the map showing the Webster outages (yellow areas show more than 500 customers without power, green shows less than 500 in a particular zip code):

'Frankenstorm' Buries County in Snow Knocking Out Power to All

In the above video, the first three and one-half minutes is a condensed version of 20 minutes of listening to trees and branches break (sorry for the annoying dripping sound).

For the second time in four months, Mother Nature dealt a heavy blow to Webster County.

After recovering from the wind storm of June 29 that left many residents without power for as long as 12 days, the County braced for predictions of as much as five feet of snow.

Unfortunately, the dire predictions came true.

Many residents in lower elevations dealt with six to 12 inches of snow, but folks up on Point and McGuire Mountains were buried under the heavy, wet snow nearly five feet in depth.

On the morning of October 30, many residents awoke to what sounded like gun fire.  The constant loud, popping noises were of course tree limbs and entire trees breaking over from the heavy snow.

Editor's note:  Updates to the Commentator will resume once full power and Internet is restored.