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Jerry Mezzatesta

American politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ6184101 ↗
Source-derived summary

Jerry Mezzatesta is an American Democratic Party politician, who has represented the U.S. state of West Virginia. He was the West Virginia House of Delegates member from the 50th District which represents Mineral County and Hampshire County in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle. The Charleston Gazette called him "one of West Virginia's most powerful politicians".

In 2004, Mezzatesta and his wife, Mary Lou, pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge that they altered and destroyed legislative computer records. Mezzatesta lost his re-election bid that same year to Ruth Rowan. In April 2005, he was fired from his $60,000-a-year job with the Hampshire County Board of Education.

In 2005, the West Virginia Ethics Commission found that Mezzatesta had violated an agreement to not use his legislative position to solicit funds for the county's school system. They subsequently fined him $2000. In September 2006, a federal grand jury indicted him and former Hampshire County Schools Superintendent David Friend on two counts of fraud and misappropriation of funds. However, on March 30, 2007, Mezzatesta and Friend were acquitted.

Editorial summary

“Jerry Mezzatesta” enters the record as american politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Jerry, Mezzatesta and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004, 2005, 2000, 2006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Jerry, Mezzatesta and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Jerry Mezzatesta” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Jerry, Mezzatesta and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6184101. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2005, 2000 and 2006.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jerry Mezzatesta”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jerry Mezzatesta primary sources, Jerry Mezzatesta archive and Jerry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jerry Mezzatesta”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Jerry Mezzatesta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.