Cleve Benedict
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Cleveland Keith Benedict, better known as Cleve Benedict, is a Republican politician in West Virginia.
He was born on March 21, 1935 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was educated in private schools and then graduated from Princeton University in 1957. He later attended a school for cattlemen in Kansas and settled near Lewisburg, West Virginia.
He held several appointed positions in the Republican state administration of Arch Moore from 1969 to 1977. In 1970 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the state Senate's 11th District. He was then a candidate for the United States Congress in the state's Second Congressional District in 1980. The incumbent congressman had retired and the Democratic Party had gone through a bruising 10-way primary election. It also faced the burden of the extremely unpopular federal administration of Jimmy Carter and state administration of Jay Rockefeller, both of whom carried the state, but lost the 2nd District by large margins. Benedict was elected to Congress and was appointed to the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
In 1982 he decided, with the urging of Howard Baker to not run for re-election, but to rather take on Robert Byrd in the statewide race for the United States Senate. He was not successful, although his campaign made great note of Byrd's record of high office in the Ku Klux Klan, his avoidance of service in World War II, and the fact that Byrd, then alone among members of Congress, owned no home in the state he represented. Benedict's campaign represented, as of 2005, the last serious and well-funded effort to unseat Byrd, spending $1,098,218.[1]
He was then appointed to an undersecretaryship in the United States Department of Energy. In 1988 he ran for statewide election at Commissioner of Agriculture, winning by a large margin. In 1992 he chose not to run for re-election, but ran for Governor, where he was defeated by a large margin in a three-way race. He finished behind two Democrats, incumbent governor Gaston Caperton and write-in candidate Charlotte Pritt.
Since then he has retired to his dairy farm and has rejected talk of further political office. He was a delegate to the 1996 Republican National Convention, and in 2000 he was elected as a delegate-at-large to the Republican National Convention committed to George W. Bush, receiving the second largest number of votes.[2] Recently, he has opposed a 124-turbine, $300 million Beech Ridge Energy wind farm to be built in Greenbrier County.[3]
- ^ http://www.nrsc.org/newsdesk/document.aspx?ID=2301
- ^ http://www.wvsos.com/elections/history/results/repconv.pdf
- ^ http://www.cnhins.com/environment/cnhinsenvironment_story_114235245.html
| Preceded by Harley Orrin Staggers |
U.S. Representative of West Virginia's 2nd Congressional District 1981–1982 |
Succeeded by Harley O. Staggers, Jr. |
