After eight days of vacation, five of which were spent sailing to Mexico and back, I’m feeling quite refreshed and ready to face the special session and the upcoming primary elections. It’s time to catch up with what I missed while I was cruising.

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While I was away, the Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports for the first three months of 2022 were released and I’ve been a little surprised at some of the bad reporting of these numbers.

It’s easy to simply look at the cash on hand of both the campaigns of Republican Congressmen David McKinley and Alex Mooney and report those numbers as Mooney winning the money race going into the final few weeks of the primary season. It’s harder work to crunch those numbers, but when you do, it reveals some interesting trends that bode well for McKinley.

As has been widely reported, Mooney ended the three-month quarter between January and March with $1.4 million in cash on hand for the new northern 2nd Congressional District race compared to $1.1 million in cash on hand for McKinley. On paper, Mooney has more money but that’s a lot less than he started out with.

At the end of third quarter 2021 fundraising at the end of last September, Mooney had a substantial amount of cash on hand, with $2.8 million compared to McKinley’s mere $502,774. By the end of 2021, Mooney’s cash on hand dropped to $2.3 million while McKinley’s increased to $1.6 million.

Both Mooney and McKinley have spent big this campaign season on nasty TV ads attacking each other, contributing to a drop in both their available campaign cash. But when you compare their cash on hand at the end of third quarter 2021 — when the campaign largely began — and their cash on hand at the end of March, McKinley’s cash on hand increased by more than 118% while Mooney’s cash on hand decreased by 50%.

During the most recent quarter between January and March, McKinley raised $478,904, which was 12% more than the $426,659 raised by Mooney. When looking at total campaign donations for the current election cycle, McKinley raised $1.5 million, which was 27% more than the $1.1 million raised by Mooney.

Of note: one expense that Mooney has that McKinley does not have is paying a law firm, as Mooney remains under investigation by the House Ethics Committee as it considers two reports submitted by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Once you get beyond the summary of donations and dive into the actual reports, the numbers really tell a different story that shows momentum for McKinley.

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Last Monday, the federal court in Florida put a pause on the federal COVID-19 mask mandate for public transportation and air travel. The decision came down two days before our flight from Orlando International Airport to Charlotte Douglas International Airport to the newly re-christened West Virginia International Yeager Airport.

For anyone who has spent any time in an airport over the last couple of months if not more, you’ll understand how insignificant this decision was. Masks are required in airports and airplanes unless actively eating or drinking. Guess what? Most people are either eating or drinking. Also, many are not wearing their masks properly to begin with. I’m not sure what good the mask mandate was even doing under these circumstances.

By my observation flying Wednesday, maybe 25% of airline travelers remained masked while others went unmasked. I largely went unmasked (I’m vaccinated and boosted) until seated near someone who was masked, donning my own mask because that’s simply the polite thing to do.

Airlines very quickly announced they were done with the mask mandate. In some cases, pilots announced the end of the mandate on flights mid-air, with passengers cheering. Some Democrats and progressives were horrified by this. Why? Do you honestly think most of these passengers were Trump-loving MAGA vaccine skeptics and mask-haters?

Newsflash: people of all stripes, political affiliations, ideologies, and what have you have been dealing with the various stresses of this pandemic for two years. Some have obviously had it worse and still do. But everyone has been touched by this pandemic in one way or another.

I don’t believe the people who cheered on flights and took their masks off are anti-mask. I do believe the cheers and relief came from people who bore the various burdens of this now endemic virus who were expressing relief after more than two years of stressful ups and downs, shutdowns, closed schools, deaths of loved ones, loss of jobs, loneliness, etc.

The transportation mask mandate is, any many cases, the last mandate many people have to deal with. It doesn’t mean that COVID-19 is done or that the virus is over. But I do find it amazing that the same people who say “trust the science” refuse to follow the science based on where the current numbers are, particularly as hospitalizations and deaths have greatly decreased even as case numbers of the more contagious but less virulent BA.2 omicron variant have increased

There is a sign on the door of the office for the West Virginia Senate’s Democratic Minority that says “just because you think the pandemic is over doesn’t mean that it is over.” I’ve been tempted to put up my own sign saying “just because you don’t think the virus is endemic now doesn’t mean the virus is not endemic.”