Kevin Christian

Hello, KC here. I am a native born, third generation West Virginian. Most of my family is from and still lives in McDowell County. I was born in Bluefield, WV and grew up in Mercer County. Due to the collapsing coal economy in the 80's, my family had to leave West Virginia so my father could support a family. We moved down the road to Richlands Virginia where he took a job as a coal miner in Buchanon County Virginia. I attended Richlands High School and during that time, I served my community as a volunteer EMT. After graduation, I joined the U.S. Army and served as an Airborne Infantryman. I put myself through college working as a black hat coal miner and graduated with degrees in electrical engineering. I looked for a job in West Virginia, and when there was none to be found, I had to do like countless mountaineers before me and move away to have the opportunity to raise a family. From there, I have worked all over the world for some of the largest international corporations in many roles including executive leadership. I currently live a self-sustaining lifestyle in Chloe WV on an acreage paradise with my wife and daughter. I am running for office because all the other candidates are taking corporate money and therefore will not be able to serve the people of West Virginia in the way they deserve. I have no allegiance to anyone nor anything else except the people of WV. I am an independent centrist republican that will serve you instead of myself. Vote KC in May

• We must secure our elections. The only way to achieve that objective is to eliminate money from the election process. Elections must be about the merit of the idea, not who raises the most corporate money. We must give all citizens the opportunity to serve in office and to have their ideas heard. The only people who know what WV needs are the people who live here, shop here, raise their families here. Instead, we allow foreign corporations to choose candidates for us. When their candidates win, the corporate agenda is what our government works on, not the citizen's agenda. Vote for KC in May. I have the skills and integrity to set aside my personal ambitions, and serve only you.
• The representative legislature is an antiquated and easily corruptable means for the people to express their will into the law that constrains them. It was basically the best we could do in the late 1700's. Now, given our communication technology, there is no reason why we could not securely allow the citizens an individual voice in that process. One person, one vote, directly. It is what the legislature is supposed to constitutionally achieve and now we have the technology to practise legisation the way it was always intended. We are spending tons of money and achieveing nothing given the thorough corruption of our legisalture. This is unsustainable. We need Citizen initiative and referendum and I plan to instal both for starters.
• We need a local, robust, small business, capitalist economy owned by the citizens of WV. You folks are common sense businesspeople, it’s an easy equation. We have cut tax revenue. Cash flow. So, how can we restore that revenue, without raising taxes? To raise revenue, we need to capitalize resources, but most private capital shifted global and pulled out. So, without competing with existing domestic extraction private businesses, I want to establish a State Bank, raise capital through the Fed’s policy of quantitative easing, which does not add to the deficit, and invest that money into extraction. We use that revenue to seed West Virginia private business. We build a robust local future ready economy, and we all win and our kids can stay.

There are 1.8 million WV citizens and everyone has their own individual perspective of what the government should accomplish. So we must, as a people, discard our disagreements for the moment and work on areas of agreement. If you look at all the political platforms in the state, they all agree around 90%. I am passionate about working on that 90% first, and then, we can tackle areas of disagreement. We live in a republic, which means the people own the resources equally, but despite our 25 trillion dollar economy, most of us are not getting our share. At minimum, government should protect the basic human needs of all citizens equally. When that fails, society begins to unravel in terrible ways. I am passionate about avoiding more suffering

I look up to anyone that realizes we are all just people. People who never find it necessary put a label in front of the word "person". Those who know that everyone is simply a fully equal person in every way and treats each other only how they would like themselves to be treated. This is the fundamental teaching of every single religious tradition that ever existed, and I try to follow this as closely as possible every moment of every day.

My political philosophy is simple. I know that we are all equal in every way. No person is better than me and I am no better than any person. In a republic, which means all the people own the state resources equally, we must ensure that with a 25 trillion GDP, everyone has their basic human needs at least met before we allow others to amass a fortune that far exceeds their needs. I am not suggesting equality of outcome. That is impossible. I am suggesting we take care of everyone's basic human needs FIRST, THEN luxury can be had within reason. We must stop consuming ourselves into oblivion.

Additionally, every individual in society must practice self-control. An individual cannot do anything that causes suffering to themselves or anybody else, including future beings. If that happens, we must create law. Therefore, the very existence of law means we as a society have lost the knowledge to control ourselves. In a world where everyone follows the teachings of Jesus or Buddha, where is the need for laws? For police? Everyone would not take more than they need and would voluntarily share. This is how we survive as a species. I think religious tradition and science agree concerning this fundamental truth; Cooperation produces success, competition produces collapse. 

It is with this understanding that I will conduct myself as the governor. Every policy or law must incentivize cooperation and discourage selfishness. To decide on policy, one must simply ask which policy idea produces more equality, unification, peace, and love. That’s always the correct policy to enact. We have complicated morality with a boatload of rationalizations for our selfishness. Strip that nonsense away and morality becomes so simple one does not even require a book to discern it. I practice a simple principle the Vedanta tradition refers to as ahimsa. It means that one must cause no harm, and if you must, cause the least amount of harm as possible to other beings. Humans, or otherwise.

The most important principle is genuine love for the people. As humans, we find it very easy to love our family. We might get angry at them, fight with them, have different ideas, but at the end of the day, we love them and would sacrifice our own welfare to ensure they do not suffer. An elected official must see all citizens as family. They must learn to sacrifice their own ambitions to ensure the citizens do not suffer. They must protect their citizen family from outsiders that are looking to take advantage of them. Like a shepherd tending to sheep, an elected official must care for the people in the same way. Make sure everyone is safe, secure, and have all their basic needs met or exceeded. When the environment changes, the shepherd must have the courage and skills to successfully lead them to greener pastures. Greener pastures for everyone. Everyone is valuable. Nobody should be treated less than anyone else, no matter what. When you love someone, that means you put their happiness and welfare above your own. This is how an elected official should serve their citizens.

Very educated in multiple disciplines. Experienced to serve the people in challenging times. I am usually driven beyond my abilities, and I still get it done. A highly creative and progressive thinker. A resource conservative. I am not satisfied with only the present, I also obsessively plan for the future. I am an outside the box thinker that is steeped in objectively solving problems, all the way to the root cause, using facts and not opinions. I owe no allegiance to a party or other candidates. My allegiance is entirely to the people of Wes Virginia. No matter who the President is, if they enact policies that are good for our citizens, I will support them. However, if the policy is bad for West Virginia I will fight for you like a bear. We can do this. Vote KC in the May Primary. Your future is in your hands.

The core responsibility for the governor is to serve the people over their own ambitions. An elected official is merely a servant. The governor is merely the chief servant of the people charged with executing their will. If the master, in this case the citizens, finds that their servants are stealing the silver, you must remove them immediately. Not because they stole, that's just the effect, the root cause is selfishness. There is no such thing as a selfish servant. A servant who steals has demonstrated that they are no longer capable of serving. By stealing silver, they have demonstrated that their personal gain is more important than serving their sovereign which in a republic like ours is the people. Our government is full of selfish servants, and it is my top priority to clean the house of those selfish thieves and install talented people who understand sacrifice and service.

To work with my fellow West Virginians, not my red and blue friends, but my blue and gold friends. I want to work together to build a new, local, small business economy in West Virginia that is wholly owned by citizens of this State. We do that for our kids, and that can be all our legacy.

The first "big event" I remember was when Mount Saint Helens was erupting. The adults seemed consumed by the TV coverage. I don't remember being old enough to have caught the worries yet, so I thought it was cool but not as remarkable as KISS.

My first job was working at Burger King when I was 15. I made 3.85 an hour. I only had it over the summer. I was dating Stephanie, who is now my wife of 32 years. It was the first time I realized the people in charge were not the most capable. Big corporate businesses value obedience over any other quality in an employee. To make manager, you don't need to be talented, just obedient. I have observed this as true in every job I have ever had. We all observe it in the government we currently have. Big business funds candidates. The candidates get to be a "big shot", although they are completely incapable of doing the job, and business gets their agenda passed at the expense of all people. I take no donations, I despise this blind obedience practice, and will work to enact merit-based elections and government employee promotions.

"The case against reality" by Donald Hoffman. It demonstrates that science is catching up with ancient fundamental spiritual traditions. I don't mean that as an insult to science. Compared to many world religions science is incredibly young. It has been around a mere 500 years or so. I am impressed that they are now understanding that reality is less real than we thought. There is something "beyond" the senses and this guy is trying to do the math on it. If you are not a reader, he determined to a 99.9 percent certainty, what we see with our senses is not real, rather a projected illusory reality emanating from our biological brain. Consequently, this is also the foundational teaching of the Advaita Vedanta school of ancient Indian spiritual knowledge. Advaita Vedanta, which means “there is only one god, and that’s the final knowledge”, cannot tell you how to calculate the true reality beyond the illusion of the senses, but it can lead you to experience it. Would it not be cool to also have objective evidence of whatever lies beyond the senses?

Jack Reacher

"Last thing I needed, first thing this morning" by Willie Nelson

Discovering my true nature. Realizing my full power and learning to practise self-control. Until I knew my true nature, I could not see the beauty in others. When I saw, what corporations were doing to such beautiful things, I knew I had to run for governor.

A governor is the chief executive officer, CEO, of the state. The governor does what every other CEO does, they put together a team of professionals to execute the will of the shareholders. In the case of a governor, the shareholders are the citizens. Just like a private CEO, the governor must deliver a maximum return on the shareholders’ investment. Taxes, and public resources, no matter their source, are the shareholders’ investment and it is the governor’s job to lead a team of people to efficiently use those resources to ensure that the Constitution is satisfied. That all people, no matter what, have equal access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For West Virginia, we must have an economy builder. A disruptor. Somebody who thinks well outside the box because we passed the opportunity for boxed solutions a couple of decades ago. We need a leader who is comfortable rearranging the way things are done and has experience blazing new business trails. Most of my opponents are lawyers. Nothing against lawyers, but objective studies show they make poor executives unless the state is already cruising along successfully. In other words, they are great sustainers of success. However, lawyers fare poorly as executive leaders when the state has a poor economy and even worse when a state needs to build a new economy. Look it up.
Although there is another business guy in the race, I believe he is only good at growing something already built successfully for Him but has nearly no experience building something of his own. If West Virginia was already doing pretty good economically, but needed to merely expand our success, I think he would be fine. He is smart and seems capable at that. However, we are in the position where we must build an entire economy from scratch, and I do not believe he has the chops to get that done. If I thought anyone else could lead the rebuilding of our state economy, I would have never entered the race. I think I am uniquely qualified and have the perfect mix of experience to finally get this job done for the voters.

The governor, as the chief executive, must accurately communicate the financial needs of the entire government for their entire gubernatorial term. The governor is executing the people's laws and must spend money to do so. The more the laws, the more it costs. The people must know what is being spent and on what. It is simply nonsense to have a flat budget year over year especially in times of high inflation. What we have brewing now in West Virginia is a disastrous failure of proper financial planning by a governor that sold us on his business acumen and simply did not deliver. I am afraid his lack of proper financial planning caused the legislature to agree to large tax cuts. The surplus was a lie and when that bill comes due during the next governor’s term, we better have a governor with an agile plan to make up that revenue from somewhere else. Many other governors would default to just raising the taxes again. Not me. I have an actual plan to keep the tax cuts, and not only make up the revenue, but exceed it and create a true organic surplus, a surplus we can use to build a new, local, mom and pop economy where WV citizens are the entrepreneurs. We can and must do that for our kids, so they don’t have to be slaves to big corporations like many politicians. You can check my plans out at www.kc4wv.org.

I plan to eliminate all veto power of the governor and give it to the people using a secure technological solution to facilitate individual voter referendum on all non-emergency legislation.

The governor should provide the legislature the people's agenda before every session and provide oversight to ensure what the legislature is working on is what the people want them to work on. The governor should also present a budget and long-term financial planning to the legislature for funding consideration. This allows the legislature oversight of the executive branch and provides objective data to ensure that the governor is not wasting the people's resources while running the people’s business and executing their law. If there are any problematic laws that are difficult to enforce, the governor should give that feedback to the legislature before the law is challenged in court which costs taxpayers dearly.

The people. I don't like politics and I hate everything about campaigning except the opportunity to go around and meet the people of West Virginia. To talk to them. To learn from them. I have met so many unsung heroes while travelling around the State. People who serve their community out of love and sacrifice. The people of West Virginia are quite remarkable. What they are able to produce with little or no funding is no less than brilliantly heroic. I plan to build an economy where we could get these people some funding and then the sky is the limit on what we could accomplish. I believe in the people of West Virginia, and I want them to have the means to live their dreams because their dreams are beautiful

The greatest challenge, and the source of most of our socio-economic problems is that our economy is in shambles. WV economic decline started in 1950 with the mechanization of the coal industry and has gone consistently downhill since. Year after year we elected politicians who said they would fix it, but never did. They were smart, capable, and likely well-intentioned, but they ended up either working for themselves or big corporate interests. They never worked for the people. Now 70 years later, WV has lost 4 Congressional seats, significantly weakening our power, and our infrastructure is trashed. We are 70 years behind in transitioning our economy and someone needs to grab the reins and finally get to work. WV is a single scientific energy breakthrough away from our resources being marketable to becoming a huge liability that we will need to clean up. We need capital now to build a new economy and if your governor candidate doesn’t have a plan to pay for all those promises they are making, then they really don't have a plan at all. Do they? Thinking up solutions is easy, finding the money to implement them, that's what a public servant should be all about.
I am also concerned about the changing climate. Without getting into whose fault it is, one thing is for sure, the climate is shifting. According to the latest science, West Virginia's greatest climate challenge will be flooding. As bad as that sounds, that beats the heck out of drought conditions, and we are fortunate that we will have too much water. However, we must PLAN for this inevitability. If we can get ahead of it, we can prevent costly flooding and channel that excess water into reserves which could be a great source of future revenue. Until then, we can use that surplus to provide water to WV citizens at a very low cost or ideally free.

Politicians are like sperm. Only one in a million turn out to be a human being.

The governor’s use of emergency powers should be limited to situations where the citizens need immediate help to alleviate their suffering and there is no time to wade through the procedural red tape in place to give the appearance of fraud prevention. These situations are almost exclusively unplanned natural disasters but can also be manmade like extreme poverty or acts of terrorism. The governor's use of this power should be scrutinized and if it is determined the governor used such powers outside the parameters of citizen relief, the governor should be reprimanded and depending on the severity of the abuse, removed from office. If elected, I plan to install a mechanism where the citizens can remove any public official, including the governor, before the next election cycle. Just like in any job interview, if you lie to get the job, and it becomes objectively true through your actions that you are not capable of delivering on your promises, the people must have a way to fire you. This will make elected officials far more accountable to the people and if the parties trick us into choosing a bad corporate candidate, the people have a means to rectify the situation.

Absolutely zero. I seek only your vote in the May primary election. I take no donations from any source and owe nobody nothing. Vote KC

Absolute transparency. It is against the law for private business executives to lie in order to make the accounting look better than it really is, and it should be the same for the public sector. Full transparency is as American as apple pie and there should be nothing kept from any citizen that asks for it. Not in a republic. No exceptions. If elected, I will accomplish this using AI oversight of the government. The software will review every law, judicial opinion, financial transaction, and police action, to name a few, and ensure the law is followed to the letter. This will be implemented by the State Auditor’s office and if corruption is flagged, they are to investigate immediately. Any public servant found serving themselves instead of the public, will be removed from public office, including the governor.