McKinley, Mooney face off in radio interview
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CHARLESTON - Reps. David McKinley and Alex Mooney, opponents in the Republican primary for the new 2nd Congressional District, appeared in person together Thursday morning during the second hour of WV MetroNews Talkline.
The event was labeled an informal joint appearance instead of a traditional debate, with host Hoppy Kercheval asking each candidate individual questions and neither candidate responding directly to each other.
Kercheval asked both McKinley and Mooney about their votes for the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in November. McKinley was one of 13 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives who voted in favor of the bill, while the bill enjoyed bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate, including by Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. The state is expected to receive between $6 billion and 8 billion from the bill for infrastructure improvements.
“This is not just 13 Republicans supporting this; this was a bipartisan effort over in the Senate,” McKinley said. “Are you going to turn your back on sewer and waterline and roads and bridges and broadband coverage for West Virginia?”
Mooney has attacked McKinley for his vote on the infrastructure bill, claiming the bill includes social spending and is contributing to rising inflation. Mooney and 3rd District Congresswoman Carol Miller, R-W.Va., voted against the bill supported by President Joe Biden.
“There was a lot of nonsense in that bill,” Mooney said. “You had a lot of other things in there, but probably the biggest reason to vote against it was $250 billion of more debt to this country. This was a $1.2 trillion Biden spending plan -I call it non-infrastructure -- of which $250 billion was debt to America. That’s reason enough to vote against that.”
Read more in Friday’s edition of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel.