Cook prepares to serve 49th Legislative District
Pennsylvania State Rep.-elect Bud Cook, who represents the 49th district, is photographed overlooking Lower Speers on Wednesday, December 21, 2016.
Cook
State Rep.-elect Bud Cook, R-West Pike Run Township, sees himself as an employee of the voters in the 49th Legislative District.
“I would tell them I was there for the (job) interview,” Cook, 60, recalled after a campaign where he went to 20,336 homes in portions of Fayette and Washington counties. “Politicians work for the citizens and not the other way around.”
Cook won the job with 13,749 votes; 11,129 in Washington County, 2,620 in Fayette, to 11,667 for Democrat Alan Benyak, 9,612 in Washington, 2,055 in Fayette.
“I’m seeing opportunities for how we can most efficiently deliver services to the ‘bosses,'” Cook said during a wide-ranging Herald-Standard interview Wednesday in Speers, a borough at the heart of a district extending from New Eagle to Waltersburg and Marianna to Donora.
“It probably takes you an hour to get from one end of the district to the other,” Cook said.
This year’s election was Cook’s second bid for the job long held by now-retired Rep. Peter J. Daley II, D-California, who defeated the Coal Center area promotions consultant by 8,557 to 6,608 in 2014.
“After the 2014 election, we started visiting townships and boroughs, as well as the one city in the district, Monongahela,” Cook said. “I got to know the municipal leaders, got to know the residents. We had more one-on-one conversations.”
As Cook noted, he saw a trend that showed party registration going from a 6-1 Democratic-to-Republican ratio in 2014 to a 4-1 ratio this year.
He said he went to homes that typically had an American flag or service flag, that typically had a statue of the Virgin Mary or some other religious symbol and that often had National Rifle Association emblems.
“We are a family-oriented community,” Cook said. “Conservative, regardless of party, with strong family values.”
He had more resources this year — 150 volunteers, compared to 15 in 2014 — but also an obstacle he didn’t have in 2014, GOP primary opponent Melanie Stringhill Patterson, a Belle Vernon businesswoman who lost to Cook by 2,672 to 2,257.
“I was not the party’s chosen one,” Cook said. “No one stepped up in 2014.”
Not everyone who stepped up to help Cook were part of the Grand Old Party. The breakdown of helpers was about 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans.
“Good ideas are good ideas, regardless of party,” Cook said. “I wanted good people. I don’t care what their party is.”
Now, however, he’s part of a 122-vote GOP majority in the state House — one boosted from 119 in large part because of victories for Cook, Matthew Dowling in the 51st District and Justin Walsh in the 58th District, all of which include portions of Fayette County.
“Politicians are going to misread what this election was about,” Cook said. “People were angry at the parties, people were angry at the politicians, at the politically connected. And they were angry about the process. People understand, politicians didn’t.”
Cook started out as a Democrat, working in 1976 for the election of Jay Rockefeller, then-president of West Virginia Wesleyan College, as governor of the Mountain State — while he was pursuing a bachelor of science degree and serving in student government.
“It took me three jobs to get through college,” Cook recalled. “I was the first-ever junior to serve as student government president.”
He later served two terms as a city councilman in Buckhannon, West Virginia, and was alumni director at West Virginia Wesleyan from 1980 to 1982. He later ran 30 Mountaineer Marts, was a convenience store owner then joined CBM and Associates, where he started as an account executive and wound up vice president before going into his own consulting business in 2009.
While going door-to-door in every precinct of the district, he visited every house in two boroughs, Donora and Marianna. In Donora he did a “marketing the Mon Valley” effort during the summer.
“These are the communities that are most challenged, but also have the most opportunity,” Cook said. “As a businessman, to me a problem is an opportunity.”
He wants to promote a Donora, Monongahela, Bentleyville and Marianna bike and water trail, showing on a map how that stretch along the Monongahela River isn’t designated as a water trail, unlike the Youghiogheny River Trail that runs along that river down toward Ohiopyle and Maryland.
“There are people making six figures on the Yough Trail, working six months a year,” Cook said.
He said he wants to promote tourism in communities where the Whiskey Rebellion was fought, to draw visitors to Donora’s Smog Museum and the building where Harley-Davidson had its second dealership, and to Marianna which was hailed in 1900 as a model industrial community, even “to the point where Teddy Roosevelt came to Marianna.”
He’s asked to serve on House committees that deal with travel and tourism, game and fish, and favors Sunday hunting.
“It is an economic driver,” Cook said. “It is also an opportunity for a young family. I have fond memories of my dad, my brother and I hunting together. It is things like that I want to promote.”
And he maps out his constituency by school districts – and sees “an awful lot of small communities” in a legislative district he describes as agricultural and municipal.
“We’ve been approached by one community about consolidation,” Cook said. “There are several communities that could benefit from consolidation.”
Cook’s mother still lives in the Coal Center area, but his brother passed away in 1991. He has three sisters, six nephews and nieces and six great-nephews and great-nieces.
“We are in a transition stage,” Cook said. He said he has two “associates” — he’d rather not call them “staff” — and may hire a third full-time or two part-time. He still is looking as well for where he will locate a constituent office.
He also admits he doesn’t know all the answers.
“I better damn well hire people that are more knowledgeable,” Cook said. His top aide, Jason White, now 29, was the number-three man in an Emerald coal mine at age 26.
“Jason is very analytical as an engineer should be,” Cook said. “He’s originally from the Marianna area and lost several friends to drugs.”
That led White to help found the Marianna Outdoorsmen Association in 2014, to give Marianna area residents a source of recreation.
“Today it hosts the largest ‘Anything That Floats’ event in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Cook said. “Last year it had 209 craft going down Ten-Mile Creek, and 4,000 paid adult (admissions).”
He’s also seen 200 people gather for the first day of trout season below the dam on Ten-Mile Creek in Marianna.
He still is seeking out a location for a public hearing on the opioid crisis that would involve the House Majority Policy Committee, at a place and time to be determined, in the second or third weeks of January.
He wants to see at least life in prison for anyone who deals drugs and kills someone in the process, though he’s “real close” to favoring the death penalty. He said there has to be
He would like to see a $1 billon investment in coal liquefaction, which could be combined with natural gas and oil development to further the nation’s energy independence.
He wants to see spending cut in Harrisburg.
“They’re broke,” Cook said. “There are tough choices and decisions to be made.”
His father was a union president and Cook recalls working as a laborer at Stauffer Chemical Company in Monongahela, so he sees both sides of the pension debate.
“It is not the employees’ fault that the legislators mishandled their pensions,” Cook said. “So we have to figure out the way to honor the deal. Going forward, however, we need to look at different formulas.”
There is a limit to his service, as one “boss” found out in Roscoe.
“A woman asked, ‘What are you going to do for me?'” Cook recalled. “I said, ‘What are you doing for yourself?’ I’m not a hand-out guy, I’m a hand-up guy.”
And he said he’ll gladly give a hand up to communities and constituents, promising a battle against the regional drug epidemic and for needs ranging from regional recreation programs to job creation.