West Virginia Justice Reveals Religious Attacks Against Him In Campaign

Today's Charleston Daily Mail reports that West Virginia State Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin spoke publicly last month for the first time about his hard-fought and successful race in 2004 for election to the state's Supreme Court. In the race, outside parties spent millions of dollars on attack ads on both sides. Benjamin said that near the end of the campaign, his opponent's supporters began a whisper campaign questioning Benjamin's religion, saying that his last name was "not a Christian sounding name." Benjamin also pointed out that one of the ads against him charged that he wanted to take God, the Bible and religion out of all aspects of public life. A full transcript and videos of the Annenberg Public Policy Center's conference at which Benjamin spoke is available online. The conference was titled Judicial Campaigns: Money, Mudslinging and an Erosion of Public Trust.