John Raese

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John R. Raese (born April 10, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland) is a West Virginia businessman and has been the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1984 and 2006. Both Raese's bids for the Senate were unsuccessful, losing to then-Governor Jay Rockefeller in 1984, and incumbent Robert Byrd in 2006. Raese also sought the GOP nomination for governor in 1988, but lost to incumbent Governor Arch Moore.

Rease is the son of Richard Aubrey "Dyke" Raese, a four-year basketball coach at West Virginia University, and Jane Greer Raese.^[1]

Raese graduated from WVU (B.S., 1973)^[2]. He is president and CEO of Greer Industries, a steel and limestone producer. His business interests also include The Dominion Post of Morgantown, West Virginia, the West Virginia Radio Corporation, which owns 15 radio stations, and the MetroNews radio network serving 56 stations. His businesses employ about 1,000 people.^[3]

In 1984 Raese lost the U.S. Senate race to Rockefeller, a sitting two-term Democratic governor, in the general election 52%-48%. Rockefeller's campaign spent $12 million on the election, while Raese's spent $1.2 million. After the Senate race, Raese was elected Chairman of West Virginia's Republican Party. In the 1988 gubernatorial campaign, he lost his primary challenge to Gov. Arch Moore 53%-47%. Gov. Moore later lost in his bid for reelection.

On May 9, 2006, Raese won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate with 58 percent of the vote in a field of six candidates. In radio advertisements aired during the primary race, Raese's campaign replayed a tape of an endorsement from Ronald Reagan made during the 1984 Senate race. In September 2006, when incumbent Robert Byrd suggested in an interview that Raese's late father would have supported him over his son, Raese began airing an ad that featured Byrd's use of a racial epithet on a 2001 television news show.^[4] In the November general election Byrd defeated Raese by 64% to 34% of the vote.^[5]

[edit] Residency controversy

The question of the state residency of Raese and his wife was raised during the 2006 primary race. Raese is a legal resident of West Virginia and has a family home in Morgantown that is on the National Register of Historic Places. By all accounts, Raese spends a good deal of time tending to his companies in the state. However, he also lives with his wife Elizabeth (Liz) and two daughters in a house valued at $2.9 million abutting the intercoastal waterway in Palm Beach County, Florida^[6]. Mrs. Raese, in a 2002 document filed with the property assessor in Palm Beach County, declared Florida as her permanent, primary home, allowing her to seek and obtain the $25,000 exemption. Several other legal documents list Elizabeth and John Raese as the owners of the property, and Raese's daughters attend school in Florida.^[7].