GOP candidate wants to remove Byrd’s name from buildings in West Virginia [View all]

A Republican candidate for the West Virginia House of Delegates hopes to introduce a bill to remove the late U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s name from all public buildings and highways across the state.

Thomas Goodman, who’s running in the 37th District against incumbent Mike Pushkin, said Byrd’s affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan was grounds for scrubbing the senator’s name from more than 50 buildings, bridges and roads in West Virginia.

In the 1940s, Byrd applied for membership in the Ku Klux Klan and organized a 150-member Klan unit in Raleigh County. Later in life, he apologized, calling those actions the biggest mistake of his life.

“We’re living in this time where we’re trying to take these modern social standards and apply them retroactively over hundreds of years of American government,” Goodman said Thursday during a meeting with Gazette-Mail editors. “Because some of these issues are at the forefront of the national conversation, almost synonymously West Virginia’s and Senator Byrd’s past are mentioned in tandem. I think that’s an embarrassment.”

See more at: http://www.wvgazettemail.com/news-politics/20160922/gop-candidate-wants-to-remove-byrds-name-from-buildings-in-wv