FAIRMONT – Marion County was as Blue as it gets in the 1970s.
The county trended a good 3-to-1 Democrat in those days – which is what made Paul Prunty, the former House of Delegates member who died last week after a lengthy illness, such a political anomaly.
Prunty wasn’t just a Republican who got elected in a sea of Ds on the ballot: He was a Republican who got re-elected – in a sea of Ds on the ballot.
Which came out to 11 times, in fact, from 1972-2000.
His service is at 11 a.m. today at Ford Funeral Home, Ford Chapel in Fairmont, with the Rev. James Saunders officiating – Saunders being another longtime elected official (three decades on the Marion County Board of Education) who followed Prunty’s lead into public service.
So did Mike Caputo, the feisty Democrat from Rivesville’s Greentown coal camp who was handily elected, and promptly intimidated, in 1996.
The latter came from Caputo’s sink-or-swim dive into the pool, as it were, during his first-ever Legislative session as a freshman delegate.
While he would go on to serve as long as Prunty, ending his tenure with stints as both majority and minority whip, Caputo very much felt in those early days, he said, like a stranger in a strange land.
Being a novice and trying to navigate the labyrinth of the Capitol complex – and politics, as played in the Mountain State – will do that to you, he said.
There was a spider web of allegiances and in-fighting, to go with committee votes, roll calls and meetings, meetings, meetings.
Enter Prunty.
“I was totally lost,” Caputo said. “Knew nothing of the process. If not for Paul, I probably would have walked out on Day Two.”
So he watched and learned from that Republican who just didn’t tread water in that sea of blue.
Besides often being the top-getter in primary and general elections, Prunty, more often than not, helped bring bipartisan legislation to shore.
There were labor skirmishes for working men and woman of his district and his state. Prunty spent four decades as a machinist at the former Westinghouse plant in Fairmont.
As an avid outdoorsman, he paid close political attention to Valley Falls State Park, which is nestled in Marion County. As a product of local public schools, he long championed Fairmont State, his hometown university.
When one of his sons would go on to excel as a Special Olympian, Prunty became an ever-present advocate (and tireless volunteer) at the Marion County Disability Action Center.
“You’re always going to know where I stand,” Prunty was wont to say, as he took on issues and considered arguments and insights that sometimes ran counter to what he had been thinking earlier.
Prunty was also in possession of a proud, and profound, West Virginia lineage.
He was a descendant of Morgan Morgan, the Colonial explorer who settled what is now the Mountain State.
His great-uncle Ephraim Morgan served as West Virginia’s 16th governor from 1921-25.
During those heady days in 1996, Caputo, however, wasn’t necessary familiar with the Prunty family history or the lawmaker’s voting record and legislative body of work in Charleston.
He just knew that a Marion County neighbor from across the aisle was reaching over to help.
“Paul guided me,” Caputo said. “He mentored me and he always supported me.”
