The new congressman from West Virginia’s 1st District is David McKinley, who captured the seat for the GOP after it had been in Democratic hands for 40 years. McKinley succeeded Rep. Alan Mollohan, a scandal-plagued Democrat who lost the primary after serving nearly 28 years in the House. Read More

The new congressman from West Virginia’s 1st District is David McKinley, who captured the seat for the GOP after it had been in Democratic hands for 40 years. McKinley succeeded Rep. Alan Mollohan, a scandal-plagued Democrat who lost the primary after serving nearly 28 years in the House.

McKinley is a seventh-generation native of Wheeling, W.Va. He was one of five boys, and his father was a civil engineer who taught him to read blueprints when he was in third grade. He attended Purdue University, majoring in civil engineering. To pay for room and board, McKinley worked in the kitchens of a sorority and a fraternity. After graduating, he married his high school sweetheart. They had three children but divorced in 1979. He married his second wife, a critical-care nurse, in 1981, and they had one child together. After college, McKinley worked for several engineering and construction companies until 1981, when he founded his own firm, McKinley & Associates, which restores historic properties and does other construction work. McKinley has suffered from hearing loss since his 20s; today he is deaf in one ear and has only partial hearing in the other.

McKinley comes from a Democratic family; his great-grandfather ran for West Virginia governor as a Democrat in 1908. McKinley switched parties in 1976 because he said he felt that the Democratic Party did not support limited government. After he won a seat in the state House of Delegates in 1981, he pushed for a bill to allow school and prison cafeterias to donate unused food to homeless shelters, and authored a law that prohibits insurance companies from canceling policies of people diagnosed with HIV. Although in his campaign McKinley called for repeal of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, he supported the provision that prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. He retired from the legislature in 1994 and ran for governor in 1996; he lost the primary to Cecil Underwood, who went on to win the general election.

In his bid for the House, McKinley had the backing of national Republicans in the primary and got 35% of the vote, defeating former state Sen. Sarah Minear and businessman Mac Warner. In the general election, he faced a strong opponent in state Sen. Mike Oliverio, who had toppled Mollohan in the primary after several newspaper accounts raised questions about whether Mollohan profited personally from business deals with people and nonprofit groups that got federal funds that he earmarked in appropriations bills.

McKinley’s ads labeled Oliverio as a “career politician” who supported “job-killing liberal Nancy Pelosi,” a reference to the House speaker. McKinley emphasized his opposition to the Democrats’ energy bill that would limit carbon emissions, arguing that it would hurt West Virginia’s coal industry. But Oliverio also opposed the bill. And his backing from tea party activists made it difficult to tar him as a tax-and-spend liberal. Oliverio emphasized that he would be independent from the then-majority Democrats in the House. “I’m not going to Congress to get in step with the Washington leadership,” he said in one debate.

Oliverio charged that McKinley got rich from government contracts even as he criticized government spending, citing federal economic stimulus money that McKinley’s architectural and engineering firm received to design a Marshall County school. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dubbed the Republican contender “Millionaire McKinley.” Still, McKinley eked out a victory of 1,440 votes out of 179,880 cast, a split of 50.4% to 49.6%.

In Washington, McKinley got a plum seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. His first bill, introduced in early 2011, was aimed at curbing the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to stop permits for mountaintop-removal mining operations.