January, 1942

RJF bucked the state Republican Party machine to run for the party's nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. His Republican opponent was Chapman Revercomb; his Democrat opponent later would have been Gov. M. M. Neely.

"Funkhouser launched a one-man campaign against Gov. Matthew Mansfield Neely.

"He hired an advance agent, mapped an itinerary and set out to stump the state. Being almost totally unknown, he had to improvise a technique for reaching the people. He used the baits of curiosity and a good meal. In each city his agent invited fifty important ladies to a tea party, and a hundred representative men to dinner on the same day, as Funkhouser's guests. He was billed as a fellow citizen who had something interesting to say on the problems of West Virginia. A hall was hired, usually the hotel ballroom, for a mass meeting after the dinner. Funkhouser spoke of "Neelyism," pouring it on the governor with camp-meeting eloquence. By the time he got through, the crusader was known to his audiences as a rich, retired businessman, a native West Virginian who had come back home to help rid the state of political oppression".

"His first act as a candidate was characteristic. He had his New York advertising agency get up a 'presentation,' bound in red that introduced the new product, his candidacy, much as a new cigarette might be presented to the trade. Armed with this, he called on the Republican county chairman in each of West Virginia's fifty-five counties. Forty percent of them yielded to his arguments, most of them openly, but the state organization remained firm; Walter Hallanan unprecedentedly opposing a primary candidate with outspoken vigor."

"In 1938, newly arrived in West Virginia, he (RJF) was registered as a Democrat. He now claims that this was the work of an employee who failed to consult him, personal registration being unnecessary in rural West Virginia." (SAT. EVE. POST)

"We hear a lot about the 'common man,' especially during political campaigns."

"Neely, who had doffed the toga to wrest the statehouse from a Democrat of whom he disapproved, now meditated a reverse maneuver - quitting the statehouse for the Senate. The governor had just about pre-empted the Democratic Party in West Virginia and many were restive under his rule. In moving about the state, Funkhouser identified a political phenomenon, which he labeled 'Neelyism.' As he saw it, Neely was "terrorizing" the state, operating a far-flung machine that discriminated against anti-New Deal Democrats and Republicans as to jobs, contracts and other benefits currently flowing from the state and Federal governments.