As I reported in Saturday’s paper, Gov. Manchin calls a lot of people, honey.

After I asked him several times at Friday’s AP Legislative Lookahead event whether he made an alleged threatening phone call to a Northwood Health Systems representative, he said, “I call a lot of people, honey.”

I was walking into the statehouse this afternoon, and Manchin was leaving the building.  He apologized and told me didn’t mean “honey” in a “derogatory” way.

Northwood is planning to sue Manchin and others for alleged political retaliation. I thought Manchin’s remarks Friday were notable for another reason, too — the fact that he seemed really eager to talk about the threatened lawsuit.

Manchin was the last speaker at the event, which ended with a Q&A session with him. As the governor was  getting ready to leave, he basically turned around and told all the reporters that spokesman Matt Turner was about to release a statement on the lawsuit.

That’s when I asked Manchin about the phone call — and he let loose on Northwood. He also told us that he calls “everybody,” (at 3 in the morning, if needed),  and that if someone claims he called them, he probably did  — but said he never retaliated against the company.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Gov. Manchin, Health care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.