Rosemary Ketchum reacts to charges filed in anonymous mailer investigation
Rosemary Ketchum, former candidate for mayor in Wheeling, shares her thoughts on charges filed in the investigation on last year’s anonymous political mailers.
WHEELING, W.Va. – Last week, Wheeling Free Press reported that charges were filed against Anand Patel for his alleged involvement in a campaign to influence the 2024 Wheeling municipal elections. Now, former mayoral candidate Rosemary Ketchum, who was targeted by those mailers, reacts.
The background…
In May 2024 – days before Wheeling held its election for mayor and city council – thousands of mailers flooded Wheeling resident’s mailboxes advocating against several candidates. These mailers provided no required disclosures of who funded or sent them.
After a year-long investigation by the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office, 22 misdemeanor charges were filed last month in the Ohio County Magistrate Court alleging Anand Patel – a Wheeling resident and the former manager of the Wheeling Inn – funded the campaign, failed to disclose the political expenditures, published false statements seeking to influence an election and published statements seemingly from a campaign that did not authorize said statements.
Patel told Wheeling Free Press that the special prosecutor assigned to the case – Wetzel County Prosecutor Timothy Haught – agreed to dismiss all but two of the charges.
Mr. Haught did not respond to a request for comment regarding this claim.
Rosemary Ketchum served as Wheeling’s third ward city councilor from 2020 to 2024 and campaigned to become Wheeling’s next mayor during the May 2024 elections. She ultimately lost, coming in second behind Denny Magruder.
Ketchum was targeted in at least two of the anonymous mailers.
One mailer featured a heavily distorted image of Ketchum posed beside Zach Shrewsbury, then-candidate for the Democratic nomination for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. Above the pair read the headline “stop the extremist takeover of West Virginia” and called on voters to “safeguard our state’s cherished values and traditions” by voting against Ketchum, Shrewsbury and “the radical WV Cant’ Wait [a political activist group in the state].”
That mailer went on to tacitly endorse Glenn Elliott, former mayor of Wheeling who also ran for – and later became – the Democratic nominee for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat.
A second mailer showed an image of Ketchum beside remarks from the state’s Mountain Party Vice Chair Dylan Parsons and Morgantown Councilor Brian Butcher, claiming Ketchum “[recruited] extremists from all factions” and asked voters “is this what Wheeling can expect.”. The mailer went on to ask if “unity or division” was the future for Wheeling.
Rosemary Ketchum responds…
Ketchum said in a press release that the charges against Patel were an “important step toward accountability and a meaningful moment in Wheeling’s continued progress as a community,” citing investments into the city’s infrastructure, public safety buildings and health facilities.
“Let me be clear: shady, behind-the-scenes tactics – whether dark money, anonymous attack ads, or other kinds of illegal electioneering – have no place in our Friendly City,” Ketchum said.
Ketchum goes on to say that the mailers not only broke the law, but that they also broke the trust of Wheeling’s electorate.
“As I’ve said before, and as the other candidates [in the 2024 election for Wheeling’s mayor] have echoed, Mayor Magruder was elected by the people,” Ketchum said. “Now it’s our responsibility to support his leadership and keep working together to build the best Wheeling possible.”
Ketchum thanked members of law enforcement who “handled this case with such care” and recognized Wheeling Free Press and this reporter “whose dedication to independent, investigative journalism really made a difference in helping bring the facts to light.”
“We’re moving forward – together,” Ketchum said. “And even on the hardest days, we prove again and again that strength lives in Wheeling, resilience lives in Wheeling – and now, accountability lives here too.”
Rosemary keeping it classy as Always. She is a real asset to our city.
Only this guy could try to make people afraid of a rose