RJF's campaign for Governor is noted in Time magazine. May 8, 1944, PP. 14-15.

Political NotesNo. 1 Heelman for Governor

"Just imagine!" cried West Virginia's hard-bitten New Dealing Governor Matthew Mansfield ("Matt") Neely, "asking the citizens to choose between Funkhouser and Rush Holt for their Governor!"

In Rush Drew Holt, the brash "Boy Senator" of the 30s who plummeted from fame almost as fast as he rose to it and has since been marking time in the State Legislature, Democrats have a candidate who is attempting a political comeback at the tender age of 38. In Funkhouser ("just call me R.J."), Republicans have a millionaire businessman who has yet to hold a major political office. With onetime U.S. Senator Neely ineligible to succeed himself as Governor (he is running for a seat in the House), the two are campaigning fiercely toward primaries next week.

Millionaire Funkhouser is board chairman of O'Sullivan Rubber Co. ("America's No. 1 Heel"), an evangelist by temperament, a Republican by adoption. He left West Virginia a poor boy, came back rich at 50 to spend "the afternoon of my life with my own people." That afternoon is being spent in considerable comfort in a 34-room mansion, near Charles Town, built in 1820 by a grandnephew of George Washington, and "restored" last year by Mrs. Funkhouser. His opponents like to point out that he teaches Sunday school in one wing of the mansion and plays poker in the other. This is true but somewhat unfair, for his piety is well tested; he even forbids swearing at the poker table.

Thrice married and twice divorced, "RJ" gathers his previous wife's three children by a former marriage for a Christmas banquet each year. It seems to come off amicably. Besides running his 1,050-acre plantation like a patriarch, he has dabbled in politics with more expense than success. In 1942, he roamed the state providing lavish free meals and exhibiting his flowing locks and friendly grin to the populace, came within 200 votes of winning the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Since then, he has established an anti-New Deal paper, called the "Jefferson Republican", which he sends monthly at his own expense to a mailing list of thousands.

He has strong oppositions in the primary. Most important comes not from his rivals, but from the state's GOP boss, Walter Hallanan, an independent oil producer, was at odds with Funkhouser even before Leon Henderson started swinging at independent oilmen in a radio series sponsored by Funkhouser's rubber company. Hallanan denounces Funkhouser as a moneybagged interloper trying to buy office, and a party turncoat whose two previous small-time political offices (one as town supervisor of swank, suburban Harrison, N.Y.) were won as Democrat. RJ, who says he has voted Republican since 1924, explains his registration as a Democrat in 1936 as a regrettable error by one of his employees, who registered for him.

"I have been a participant in some hotly-fought political campaigns..."