MARMET, W.Va. — A large crowd lined MacCorkle Avenue in the Kanawha County town of Marmet Monday morning to cheer for participants in the town’s annual Labor Day parade which included sounds of firetrucks, trumpets, drums, bag pipes and more.
Community organizations, the Riverside High School Marching Band, fire departments, local government representatives and candidates on the local and state level participated in the parade.
The event marked the unofficially start of this fall’s election season. Candidates were out shaking hands with citizens two months before this year’s General Election.
“A lot of them were in the parade and you know where they went right after this? They went door knocking to introduce themselves to people in the community,” said Carolyn Stricklen, chair of the Kanawha County Republican Executive Committee.
Both Republicans and Democrats were represented in this year’s parade, but John Buckley, a Libertarian candidate for Secretary of State, was there to urge West Virginia voters to vote for him.
“People are so tired of the same old choices — Republican and Democrat,” he said. “More people, especially millennials, want smaller government to just leave them alone.”
Buckley said, if elected, he would advocate for “fair, open and inclusive elections” that welcome all five party candidates to debate.
The way to fix West Virginia’s budget problems is one of the many concerns lawmakers, candidates and residents have going into this election including Buckley. He said the solution is lower taxes.
“If you’re in a hole, don’t dig it deeper,” he said. “We have to cut off wasteful spending.”
“Businesses would be sucked into our state,” he said, if taxes were lowered. “Smaller taxes and more individual freedom because young people want their own lifestyles and that makes it an attractive place to live.”
Stricklen shook her head as she told MetroNews “we’re so far in debt.”
“I think one of the first things we need to do is find out really how far we are in debt because I don’t think we really know,” she said.
The two candidates she knows will change West Virginia for the better are GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and gubernatorial nominee Bill Cole.
“He’s a business man,” she said of Trump. “He knows what it takes to grow businesses because he wouldn’t be the business man he is if he didn’t know, first of all, what to do and how to get the right people in the jobs.”
Cole, she said, supports putting coal miners back to work just like Trump does.
“The coal industry is the bed rock of West Virginia. We can’t kill coal. We can’t,” Stricklen said. “And we can do clean coal. We just have to get the industries in here to do that.”
Favoring small businesses is something that Dave Green, of Cabin Creek, said is a good idea. Green, who attended Monday’s parade, is a Trump supporter.
“I believe he’s going to be a strong man and get people back to work — the coal miners, I believe he’ll help them,” Green said, wearing a “Hillary Clinton for Prison” t-shirt.
Many West Virginians have said they would not vote for Clinton because of her previous statement this year to “put a lot of coal miners and a lot of coal companies out of business”. Green said he has a difficult time trusting her.
“I don’t like Hillary,” he said. “She’s a crook — just plain as day.”
Stricklen said she would’ve liked to see a woman become President for the first time, but “it’s not this woman. She has too much baggage.”
Monday’s parade ended with an outdoor carnival in town which included food, games and activities — an event that has been put on for years.
“Let’s get our people to work,” Stricklen said of what she’s most looking forward to this election year. “That’s what I’m looking forward to, so that my grandchild maybe can see the West Virginia that I grew up in as a child.”
General Election Day is Nov. 8.