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Candidate upset by use of late father’s photo

Image from The Charleston Gazette A campaign mailer from the National Association for Gun Rights depicts the late Dale Martin, the father of candidate Joshua Martin.
Image from The Charleston Gazette
A campaign mailer from the National Association for Gun Rights depicts the late Dale Martin, the father of candidate Joshua Martin.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A national gun-rights group used a photograph of the late Delegate Dale Martin in a campaign mailer that attacks Martin’s son, Joshua Martin, a Putnam County Democrat running for a seat in West Virginia’s 13th House District.

The National Association for Gun Rights sent the mailer to 13th District voters in Putnam and Mason counties last week.

Joshua Martin, who received a copy in his mailbox at home, said he was stunned to see a picture of his father in the mail piece. Dale Martin died of an apparent heart attack in 2011.

“I miss Dad so much,” Martin said. “We did everything together: We hunted together, fished together, played golf together, did politics together. And then for somebody to throw this in my face … Mom saw it. I saw it. We’re both sitting there crying.”

Martin’s mother, Helen Martin, was appointed to replace her husband in the West Virginia House of Delegates and represented the 13th District through December 2012.

The National Association for Gun Rights’ mailer includes a staged picture of someone holding a large butcher knife over a woman cowering on the ground.

The mailer alleges Joshua Martin and fellow Democrat Josh McGrath, who’s also running in the 13th District, won’t support measures that would do away with all state and federal laws that aim to regulate weapons.

The mailer displays McGrath’s photo correctly but substitutes Dale Martin’s picture for Joshua Martin’s…

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