I know that my legislative representatives at the state and federal level are wingnuts but even with that undergirding assumption they continue to amaze me with their stupidity and delusions.

Patricia Rucker is my state senator. She is an immigrant from Venezuela, and normally that would be the beginning of a story about how someone came to the US, made a great life for themself, and then wanted to serve the country as an elected official. Except Rucker is a Republican in one of the biggest wingnut states, and so here we are.

Rucker is a wholly-owned subsidiary of everything the right wing oligarch class wants, as evidenced by the fake awards she proudly lists on her campaign website. She says she believes in small government but she’s a huge supporter of letting the government into women’s wombs. During the most recent session of the WV legislature, Rucker introduced a bill that would cover a medical hoax to reverse a chemical abortion.

Here’s part of her reasoning:

“If she took that first pill and then said, ‘What am I doing? I wanna try to reverse it,’ it just allows pregnancy centers that are already in code to help them,” Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, said.

“I also want to point out that it is with medical care. Like, you do not take this procedure outside of having medical supervision,” Rucker said. “I do believe it is just affirming for us to be able to do this.”

“Affirming”. Err…

Rucker has also introduced legislation to punish medical professionals who prescribe chemical abortion medication:

Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the intent of Senate Bill 85 is to stop the flow of abortifacients into the state for the purpose of illegal abortions. The bill attempts to enforce the state’s abortion ban on out-of-state entities or physicians who would send the medication to West Virginia residents.

The penalty for violating the law would be three to 10 years in prison for a person who is not a licensed medical professional. Licensed medical professionals would face the revocation of their license, according to the bill.

And of course she repeated the lie about mifepristnone getting into the water supply, which is a favorite lie of WV MAGAt legislators:

The legislation also requires manufacturers of abortion pills to include a “catch kit” for the disposal of the abortion drugs.

“Unfortunately, the systems that we have for cleaning impure water is not meant to catch those types of chemicals, which means that even things like birth control are in our water,” she said.

But wait, she gets even nuttier about abortion:  she regularly introduces a bill to remove rape and incest as exceptions to WV’s abortion ban. She ain’t right.

This session Rucker has expanded her nuttiness campaign beyond punishing her fellow women to introducing a bill that requires people registering to vote to somehow prove that they intend to stay “indefinitely”. I wrote about this bill when our governor “Jersey Pat” Morrisey signed it into law LINK and I was mystified as to why it was a priority, especially because the right of college students to vote where they go to school has been settled by the Supreme Court.

Well I was looking up something related to that issue this week and I happened upon this explanation from Rucker:

West Virginia University students who register to vote in Monongalia County, whose permanent residence is not in Monongalia County, are not at risk of losing voting rights, according to bill sponsor Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson.

“[Students] can still vote in their state of residence or the state that they came from, but if they choose to vote as a student, if they choose to register to vote in West Virginia, that actually is a sign that they intend to stay in West Virginia,” she said.

Well, yeah—that’s literally the law.

Rucker said there are no repercussions for “having intent” but later changing it or leaving the area. Her motivation for the bill was to stop people who temporarily reside in her home county, Jefferson County, during government training periods from voting.

“There are people that are here in the eastern panhandle who have no intention of being here,” she said. “They’re here temporarily. They’re coming here for training because we have these federal training facilities, and the government tells them, ‘Go to training for six weeks, eight weeks, six months, and then you go back to wherever we are going to assign you.’”

OK—here’s the thing:  that is simply not happening. It is 100% a figment of this woman’s ignorance, lack of basic critical thinking skills, and a willingness to believe every piece of fake news that tickles her ideologically.

The bill’s purpose is to “codify” past court decisions that have already been adjudicated regarding voter rights, according to Rucker. She explained that those registering to vote no longer have to rely on past court decisions to determine their eligibility.

“I couldn’t just leave it the way it is now with ‘Okay, there’s [a] court decision,’ so if somebody else goes to court, they rely on previous decisions,” she said. “We could just keep it that way, but that requires someone to go through the legal system, to be challenged, and they have to get a lawyer. By putting it into code, it makes it clear to everyone so they can avoid breaking the law.”

Oh wait, reality is calling—what’s that? Oh so if you want to challenge a state law you still will need to get a lawyer? Thanks for the update.

As a first-generation immigrant to the United States, Rucker emphasized the importance of voting honestly.

“As someone who went through the process to become legal, to vote in the United States of America, I’ve always been passionate about voter integrity, about ensuring it matters,” she said. “These folks are voting in my elections, here, in my district, without ever having paid a single penny in taxes, not reading the newspaper, not listening to local radio, have no buy-in at all to West Virginia. I just think it’s wrong, and it dilutes the votes of actual West Virginians.”

Are these people from out-of-state here for a few weeks to vote in Jefferson County elections here in the room with us, Senator? And kudos to the student journalists at WVU for being the only news outlet to cover her wingnut explanation.

If you asked me for her rationale I would posit that her margin of victory is less with every subsequent election because more and more people are moving into Jefferson County and when those legal residents vote, they are unlikely to vote for a nutjob extremist. But Rucker isn’t capable of making that logical leap so it’s a bunch of nefarious people here for government training (that is the one part of her story grounded in reality—there are federal training facilities in the county thanks to our Democratic US Senators) who somehow are only here during elections and who are determined to interfere in our state elections.

Except that we know that the reality is that is the governor and his out-of-state millionaire bosses who are the ones actually interfering in state elections.

I’ll leave you with this: