Primary Election: Tuesday, May 13, 2008

General Election: Tuesday, November 4, 2008

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Thornton Cooper, a Democrat who resides in South Charleston, became the first person in the 2008 election campaign to file his formal certificate of announcement to represent West Virginia’s Second Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives during the two-year term that begins in January 2009. The filing was made in the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office on January 14, 2008.

Over three months earlier, on October 4, 2007, Mr. Cooper became the first Kanawha County Democrat to announce that he would be running for office in 2008. Mr. Cooper is currently a member of the Kanawha County Democratic Executive Committee. His four-year term on that committee runs to the middle of 2010.

A lawyer and a retired state employee, Mr. Cooper, 58, said that, if he is elected, his top priorities would be the following:

While Mr. Cooper welcomes contributions from individuals, he has pledged not to accept any campaign contributions from corporations, labor unions, political action committees, or other special-interest groups. He also signed and filed the Code of Fair Campaign Practices prepared by the West Virginia State Election Commission.

Composition of Second Congressional District

The Second Congressional District extends from Point Pleasant to Harpers Ferry. It includes the following eighteen (18) counties: Berkeley, Braxton, Calhoun, Clay, Hampshire, Hardy, Jackson, Jefferson, Kanawha, Lewis, Mason, Morgan, Pendleton, Putnam, Randolph, Roane, Upshur, and Wirt Counties.

Mr. Cooper has repeatedly stated that the current boundaries of the current Second Congressional District are primarily the result of political gerrymandering that took place in 1991, following the 1990 Census, with small modifications in 2001, following the 2000 Census. In his opinion, it is unfair to the residents of the Eastern Panhandle to place any of their counties in the same congressional district that contains Kanawha County, the most populous county in West Virginia.

Indeed, at the time of the 2000 Census, over half (305,619) of the Second Congressional District’s 602,243 residents lived in its four (4) westernmost counties: Jackson (28,000), Kanawha (200,073), Mason (25,957), and Putnam (51,589) Counties.

It is Mr. Cooper’s hope that the inequities in the current apportionment of the Second Congressional District will be corrected in 2011, after the results of the 2010 Census are made public.

Education and Family

Mr. Cooper was born and raised in South Charleston. His brothers Tom (now deceased) and John and he attended public schools there. After graduating from South Charleston High School in 1968, Thornton Cooper attended Yale University. In 1972 he graduated from Yale with a B. A. in Political Science. Between 1975 and 1978, he attended the West Virginia University College of Law, where he received his law degree (Juris Doctor) in 1978.

His parents were Thomas R. Cooper, Sr., an electrical engineer and draftsman at the Union Carbide Technical Center, and Virginia Watson Cooper, who taught English and Latin at South Charleston Junior High School, Stonewall Jackson High School, and George Washington High School. Thornton Cooper has two (2) sons: Jeremy, 25, who graduated from Charleston Catholic High School and Oberlin College, and now lives and works in Pittsburgh; and Timothy, 21, who graduated from George Washington High School and is attending West Virginia University under a Promise scholarship.

Public Service

Thornton Cooper worked for 30 years in state government. At the end of 2005, he retired from the Public Service Commission of West Virginia after nearly 25 years at that agency as an attorney and administrator. During much of that time he was involved in the regulation of private companies that collect and transport solid waste in West Virginia. From January to December 2006, Mr. Cooper also worked on a part-time basis for that agency as an independent contractor. During those twelve months, he wrote four instruction manuals. Prior to working for the Public Service Commission, Mr. Cooper worked for the West Virginia Department of Highways and the West Virginia Human Rights Commission.