When the legislators and lobbyists descend upon Charleston for the legislative session, it means one thing: parties and receptions every night. For 60 straight nights, there is no reason anyone in the capitol should pay for his or her own supper. If you aren’t invited to the event, all you have to do is confidently walk past the registration table and you are in.

Since this is an election year, the number of parties per night doubles as does the lobbyists and the number of legislators hobnobbing.

I have no desire for the night scene, but there have been a few receptions I have attended.

Plants’ campaign begins to bud

Mark Plants is running for 8th district in Senator Steve Harrison’s place. While I would have certainly preferred Harrison remain in office, Plants is a fantastic candidate with a bright future.

Even though Plants has never run for public office, he is off to a good start. Not only was the event well attended, one Charleston insider remarked that the most encouraging thing to him about the whole evening was there were very few people there he knew. Fresh blood in a campaign is always a good thing.

Keep a close eye on Plants’ campaign. There are very big plans being made that will doubtless make the front page.

CAB2

Another shindig was the second annual Charleston Area Bloggers meeting at Taylor Books. The numbers grew from last time to eight and all had a good time.

I thought at first that the bloggers would all be type A personalities, but the opposite is surprisingly true. While everyone has a great time – or seems to at least – and there is no dearth of interesting conversation, most participants are reserved by nature.

If you are a Charleston blogger, please join us next time. We always hold it the first Wednesday of the month.

The Augusta Group

Every Tuesday a band of Republicans in the Charleston area meet at Charleston’s Fifth Quarter for lunch. The meeting is open to any Republican. You don’t have to make a reservation or let us know you are coming. Just ask the waiter seating you for the “Augusta Group” (not to be confused with Augustas Gloop).

Last Tuesday’s meeting featured a half dozen candidates, the Secretary of State and Republican Party Chairman Rob Capehart.

A speech they’ll never forget

Today the South Charleston Chamber of Commerce held their annual groundhog breakfast. The breakfast started very early at 6:30 a.m. so that everyone could attend and still get to work on time. This event had 8 different speakers briefly make remarks.

One of the guests was supposed to be Governor Manchin, but he could not attend so he sent First Lady Gayle Manchin instead.

According to attendees, Gayle Manchin was the fourth speaker in the lineup. When she stood, she started sharing personal stories on the mining disaster, but after that the speech went south. She started rehashing the Governor’s legislative priorities and went on for 40 minutes!

It was so late when she finally finished, many people decided not to wait for the other speakers and quickly left. As one attendee remarked, “it was like a grenade went off.”

The First Lady needed to realize that if each of the 8 speakers had taken the liberties she did and spoke 40 minutes, the event would have lasted over 5 hours.

Only at the capitol

Finally, I was in the men’s room in the capitol washing my hands when in burst a man of seemingly Arabic descent in full Arab regalia with a headdress, robe, and everything. The man was carrying a little gold teapot. He walked over to the sink, washed the teapot, turned it over to empty out the excess water and walked out without a word.

As soon as he left, I died laughing.