Late Friday night, a sitting member of the West Virginia Legislature, Delegate Ty Nestor, R-Randolph, repeatedly used homophobic slurs via phone against a member of our staff before making threats of physical violence against him.
Nestor now claims he doesn’t remember the phone call because he was drinking.
We’d ask for censure, but we know that won’t happen.
We’d ask for him to be removed from committees, but we know that won’t happen either.
We’d ask for him to do something good for the LGBTQ+ community, but considering he just voted to legalize discrimination against them, that seems like a nonstarter. Let us be clear: Nestor’s rhetoric and his votes that cause harm to LGBTQ+ people come from the exact same place.
So instead, we issue our plea to the voters of Randolph County. You can do better. You hold the power to vote violent bigots out of office. And you can hold Nestor accountable for his actions with emails, phone calls and demands for his resignation every single day until Election Day comes.
We just ask that you do so with more respect than he showed our staff member.