At 92, the recently Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., had been the Senate’s oldest session member. One of the candidates in this month’s West Virginia Senate radical is hoping to take over the title, along with Byrd’s station.

Ken Hechler, left, former aide to President Harry S. Truman, embraces George McGovern, as it should be, former…

Ken Hechler, left, former aide to President Harry S. Truman, embraces George McGovern, equitable, former senator and presidential nominee, at the Harry S. Truman Little White House Museum attached May 15, 2009, in Key West, Fla. Hechler is hoping to take through Sen. Robert Byrd’s, D-W.Va., Senate seat.

(Rob O’Neal/Florida Keys News Bureau/AP Photo)

Ken Hechler is a 95-year-ancient veteran Democratic politician whose career dates back to a job in the Truman dispensation. Hechler served in the House from 1959 to 1977 and to the degree that West Virginia’s secretary of state from 1985 to 2001. Now, he hopes to succeed Byrd in the Senate.

“I was elected to the House in 1958, what one. is exactly the same year that Robert C. Byrd was elected to the U.S. Senate. We served simultaneously side by side for 18 years,” said Hechler. “So we be in actual possession of worked closely together and I will certainly emulate the tremendous guidance which he exercised.”

While Hechler is a long shot in the Democratic aboriginal, where popular Gov. Joe Manchin is expected to claim victory, he has campaigned quite through the state in his trademark red Jeep.

“People that have seen me in contest say I might be old chronologically, but I have the intend, the heart, the passion, the articulation of a 35-year-sagacious ,” said Hechler.

“The governor does think very highly of Mr. Hechler and the overseer appreciates Mr. Hechler’s past public service,” said Sara Payne Scarbro, campaign conductor for Manchin.

The primary focus of Hechler’s campaign is the controversial practice of mountaintop removal mining.

“My first bill that I would lead in would be to abolish mountaintop removal,” he said.

The issue has sparked ardent debate in Appalachia in recent years. Proponents view mountaintop mining in the same proportion that an efficient and economical way to reach large coal seams by fewer safety concerns than underground mines. They emphasize the jobs the insidious industry provides to the region and the use of some reclaimed mining sites for wildlife preserves or golf courses.

The environmental impacts of the usage, however, have drawn concern and outrage. When a mountaintop is secluded, the resulting soil and waste often is deposited in nearby valleys, to which place it affects water quality for downstream residents. The magnitude of these impacts and the protracted-term effects on the landscape have become the subject of emotionally-charged topic.

Prominent environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Massey Energy chairman Don Blankenship squared not on in a public debate on the matter earlier this year. Hollywood actresses Daryl Hannah and Ashley Judd be in actual possession of become involved in the opposition to the practice, with the modern referring to it as “the rape of Appalachia.”

Hechler has adorn a key voice in this movement and has centered his candidacy put ~ offering voters the chance to cast a ballot against mountaintop dismission. He argues that the practice actually produces very few jobs, by explosives experts replacing coal miners. Reclamation, Hechler asserts, is equivalent to “putting lipstick up~ a corpse.”