MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — A pharmacist from Morgan County is making his first political run in this year’s race for the Republican nomination for Congress in West Virginia’s 2nd District.
“We’re doing this because I am an extreme fiscal conservative,” said Ken Reed on Tuesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
A native of Brooke County, Reed graduated from the West Virginia School of Pharmacy in 1992. He and his wife, Tally, opened the first Reed’s Pharmacy in Berkeley Springs in 1998.
“From there, I invested in that community and I look at this (campaign) the same way. I’m investing in this 2nd Congressional District,” said Reed, a father of four who has put $200,000 of his own money into his Congressional campaign.
“I look at it as the seed money to get going and my goal is eventually for them (the people of the 2nd District) to invest in me. I would like to connect the counties. I would like to get away from this idea that it’s east versus west. It’s one district.”
If elected, he said he’ll apply the same business sense he uses to run his pharmacy in Washington, D.C.
“Being a small businessman, I know how to balance a budget,” he said. “When you agree to pay for something, it’s on the books at that particular time. I know how important that is because I know there’s no bailout coming for me.”
In addition to Reed, the other Republican candidates in the 2nd Congressional District are Robert Lawrence Fluharty, an investigator from Charles Town; Alex Mooney, a former Maryland state senator; Steve Harrison, a former Kanawha County state senator; Charlotte Lane, a former PSC chair and former commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission; Jim Moss, a cost management specialist with Toyota Motors Manufacturing and Ron Walters, Jr., a financial consultant in Charleston.
The Democrats running in the 2nd Congressional District are Nick Casey, a former state Democratic Party chair, and Meshea Poore, a Kanawha County delegate.
Early voting ahead of the May 13 Primary Election in West Virginia begins Wednesday.