"President of Us" election narrowed to two

Last week was a good one for the town of Brookneal. The William Campbell High School football team soundly defeated arch-rival Gretna, and two Brookneal residents survived into the final round of The News & Advance’s “President of Us” contest.

President of Us: Buddy Crews

President of Us: Jason Watson

See the vote totals and read all of the candidates' positions here

Marvin “Buddy” Crews Jr., who currently works as a prison minister, led the field with 246 votes, while Patrick Henry Boys & Girls Plantation director Jason Watson had 95.

Initially, Junior Gallaher, of Lynchburg, finished second with 151 votes, but called to say he had discovered that some of those votes came as the result of a “computer glitch” and disavowed 100 of them, leaving him third. Phil Pantana, of Lynchburg, finished fourth with 49 votes and Lib Elder, of Gladys, fifth with 47.

The contest was inspired by the frequent conversations many of us have about the federal government, and how we could probably do a better job running the country than whatever president happens to be in the office. With that in mind, Central Virginians were invited to submit platforms and run for “President of Us,” to be voted in or out by News & Advance readers.

In all, 10 took us up on the offer. Besides the top five, others who put themselves on the line (and in the paper and on our Web site) included Belinda Bush, Jim McFarland, Charles Tanner III, Jim Batton and Joe Turk.

Crews was a factory worker in Brookneal who had to give up his job when he developed multiple sclerosis. His interest in government began as a personal quest to find help in paying for his myriad medications, which had grown to more than 20.

“I contacted all of my representatives,” Crews said, “from Kathy Byron to Virgil Goode up to our U.S. Senators, who were George Allen and John Warner when I started. It wasn’t that I was asking for anything special. My main complaint was just that in looking at a person’s income, the Social Services department failed to take into account how much a person was spending on medication. In my mind, that should have been subtracted from the gross income.”

Instead, Crews said, “I was swimming in that Medicare hole. I made too much money to get a lot of help, and not enough to pay for what I needed.”

A deeply religious man, Crews came to regard his suddenly diminished status as giving him a new perspective into the lives of other unfortunate people. Eventually, he became a minister and now conducts a volunteer ministry at several Southside prisons.

“That’s become another issue I’m very interested in,” he said. “We need to do a better job of preparing these people for what they’re going to do when they get out of prison. Otherwise, they circulate right back in.”

Watson has been interested in public affairs for as long as he can remember.

“One of my majors at Drake University was political science,” he said, “and I seriously thought at one point of joining somebody’s staff or going to work for a think tank or something like that. Going to college in Iowa, especially during a presidential year, you can’t avoid politics.”

Instead, Watson got a Master’s in theology from Baptist Bible College in Rocky Mount, N.C., and took a job teaching history and government at a Christian school in Maryland.

“My wife and I were both teachers,” he said, “and we started wondering what it would be like to be able to interact with kids outside of the classroom as well as inside. That’s what led us to Patrick Henry.”

Watson has worked at the Boys & Girls Plantation for seven years and served as director for four.