The question worth asking is this: what happens if he doesn’t finish the job?

It is a question worth sitting with on primary eve, before results render it either moot or urgent.

The Scale of the Operation

The numbers tell the story plainly. Sugar Maple PAC and School Freedom Fund, two independent expenditure committees operating in the Morrisey orbit and sharing infrastructure with the governor’s Black Bear PAC, together spent more than two million dollars in Republican-only primaries for the House of Delegates and State Senate. Roughly $440,000 of that was directed explicitly against incumbent Republicans, members of the governor’s own caucus.

Sugar Maple alone drew $450,000 from a single donor, Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, a major national school choice advocate. David McKinley, son of the late Congressman, launched a counter-PAC called the Mountaineer Conservative Alliance-Action Fund, but it spent less than $400,000 total, concentrated in only six Senate races.

The scope here was a broad-front offensive, not a surgical strike. And broad-front offensives carry consequences whether they succeed or fail.

The iron law of political warfare holds that a campaign of this kind either breaks the opposition or hardens it into something far more dangerous than it was before.

The Scenario Nobody Wants to Model

Consider the range of outcomes possible when results come in Tuesday night.

In the most favorable scenario for the governor, a near-total sweep of his hand-picked battles: Takubo, Deeds, and most of the targeted incumbents are gone. The new caucus, shaped by Morrisey-backed challengers, is compliant. Legislation flows. The 2027 session proceeds with the governor holding the kind of legislative leverage West Virginia executives rarely possess.

But even in that scenario, the method is now established. Every future Republican legislator in West Virginia now knows that crossing the governor invites a well-funded primary challenge. That knowledge cuts both ways. It disciplines some. It radicalizes others. And it produces a caucus that behaves not out of conviction but out of fear, a notoriously unstable foundation for governance.

The more complicated scenarios begin where the sweep falls short.

If Morrisey knocks out two or three high-profile targets, Takubo and Deeds among them, but eight or ten targeted incumbents survive, something historically predictable follows. Survivors of near-death political experiences do not emerge chastened. They emerge emboldened, with nothing left to lose in their relationship with the governor and a personal grievance to fuel them through the next two years.

The incumbents who barely survive will return as an organized oppostion faction to Patrick Morrisey, not as cooperative members of a supermajority. Who could blame them? The governor will have created, at significant expense, exactly the legislative problem he set out to solve. Only now the problem will have a personal edge that simple policy disagreement never carries.

West Virginia Has Seen This Before

The closest historical parallel in West Virginia politics is not a comfortable one for anyone drawing lessons from it.

In 1996, Joe Manchin, having lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary, joined with conservative Democrats in the Legislature to form Democrats for Underwood, actively supporting Republican Cecil Underwood over his own party’s nominee, Charlotte Pritt. The intra-party warfare of the primary spilled directly into the general election and ultimately into the organization of the chamber itself.

The parallel is imperfect. Republicans hold a supermajority of a kind that makes a general-election defection scenario far less consequential numerically. Democrats simply do not have the seats to benefit from Republican fracture in November the way Underwood did in 1996.

But the legislative session is a different matter entirely. Supermajorities are only functional when members vote together. A supermajority whose members are actively working to frustrate the executive’s agenda, while remaining Republican enough to survive their own re-elections, functions as a vehicle for stalemate dressed in partisan unity rather than any kind of governing coalition.

You do not need a Democratic resurgence to produce a governing crisis in West Virginia. You only need ten Republicans who remember what was done to them this spring.

The Question of What Comes Next

The Morrisey operation has operated on the theory that the primary threat is sufficient to produce compliance. That theory has empirical support in some contexts. Legislators who watched a colleague lose in a primary for opposing the governor are likely to think twice before casting a similar vote.

What the theory does not adequately account for is the difference between legislators who are persuaded and legislators who are cornered. A persuaded legislator becomes an ally. A cornered legislator becomes a problem that money alone cannot solve.

That arithmetic matters because political capital is not replenished by winning primaries. A governor who expends this level of resource and personal credibility primarying his own caucus has placed a very large bet. If the targeted incumbents survive in numbers sufficient to organize, the governor enters the 2027 session having spent down his leverage without having eliminated the resistance. The operation will have demonstrated its reach without establishing its dominance, which in legislative politics is often the worst of both worlds.

The 2027 session will arrive with budget pressures, economic development priorities, and an education funding structure that requires ongoing legislative maintenance. The governor will need a functional working majority to accomplish any of it. Whether he has one will depend not merely on how many challengers win Tuesday, but on what the survivors carry out of this primary with them.

That is the question worth watching when the results come in: not just who won and who lost, but who survived, and what they now owe nobody at all.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

A political action committee with documented ties to Governor Patrick Morrisey’s political network has raised $565,000 since February from just 22 donors. The vast majority of that money, roughly 92 percent by one count, came from outside West Virginia. That PAC, Sugar Maple, has been spending down its war chest on mailers and digital ads across Senate and House races, targeting sitting Republican incumbents the governor has decided are insufficiently loyal.

Let that sink in. The governor of West Virginia went to New York, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, Connecticut, Utah and elsewhere to raise over half a million dollars, and is now using it to reshape a Republican legislature that already gave him supermajorities.

The Network Behind the PAC

Sugar Maple PAC is not a mystery organization. Its treasurer is Charles Gantt, who holds the same treasurer role for West Virginia Prosperity Group and Black Bear PAC, both established pro-Morrisey political entities. The PAC shares an address with those groups and uses vendors with deep Morrisey ties, including Acquire Digital, LLC, which has received over $2 million from Black Bear PAC since 2023.

The money trail runs further back. Morrisey’s inaugural committee donated $500,000 to the West Virginia Prosperity Group, which in turn funneled $125,000 to Black Bear PAC. That is the dark money architecture that preceded Sugar Maple’s current primary blitz.

The governor himself, it should be noted, is legally insulated from direct coordination with Sugar Maple. But the network is so thoroughly intertwined that the coordination claim requires considerable imagination to accept. Former Republican Senate President Mitch Carmichael, hardly a Morrisey enemy, said the situation is, in his words, ‘unique,’ and that it all should be based on what’s good and right for the people of West Virginia.

The Billionaires and Their Agenda

Who is writing these checks? Jeff Yass, the Pennsylvania-based billionaire managing director of the SIG trading firm, contributed $100,000. Yass is worth an estimated $64 to $88 billion and ranked as the sixth largest political donor of the 2024 election cycle nationally, having spent more than $101 million. His defining political interest, by his own statement to the Washington Post, is school choice programs like West Virginia’s Hope Scholarship.

Thomas Klingenstein, a New York City hedge fund manager and chairman of the board of the Claremont Institute, also contributed $100,000. Sean Fieler, another conservative megadonor, added $50,000. Meanwhile, the Americans for Prosperity network, founded by David Koch, has separately spent money attacking House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss and Vice Chair Clay Riley over their handling of the Hope Scholarship expansion.

The picture that emerges is not complicated. A collection of out-of-state school choice advocates, using a PAC with Morrisey’s fingerprints on its organizational infrastructure, is attempting to replace skeptical Republican appropriators with legislators who will fund the Hope Scholarship without serious oversight. The program has grown from $9 million in its first year to $300 million in the most recent budget. These donors want to ensure that trajectory continues without interference from legislators who ask hard questions about accountability.

The Targets: Republicans with 38-Year Records, Not Liberals

Sugar Maple’s attack ads have called Vernon Criss, who has served West Virginia in and out of the legislature for 38 years, a ‘liberal.’ According to Americans for Prosperity’s own data, Criss votes with AFP’s positions nearly 90 percent of the time. His offense was presiding over a Finance Committee that asked whether a $300 million voucher program should have a spending cap. For that, he is being called a RINO. If that charge is warranted, it should be on the grounds that Criss has a pro-abortion voting record.

Sen. Vince Deeds, a Republican from Greenbrier County, is being primaried for refusing to simply sign off on whatever the governor demands. Deeds told West Virginia Watch directly: “The governor wants me to completely 100% agree with him on his policy initiatives and, bluntly, I cannot do that. I will not give up my vote for the Morriseys. I can’t be bought.’

Sen. Ryan Weld of Brooke County put the math plainly: of the $565,000 raised by Sugar Maple, only 8 percent came from West Virginia. He said the governor ‘made whatever promises he needed to make while raising that money. “We don’t answer to the governor. We answer to the people in our district.”

Del. Scot Heckert, who once tried to extend an olive branch to the governor by literally standing at his side during the State of the State address, said the experience left him feeling hopeful before the goodwill evaporated. “None of us get a chance to see his vision,” Heckert said. “We’re just told to do this and do that. That ain’t good governance, that’s dictatorship.”

The Principle at Stake

West Virginia conservatives have long argued, correctly, that local governance is better governance. That decisions made closer to the people are more accountable, more responsive, and more legitimate than directives handed down from distant centers of power. It is a foundational conservative argument. Jefferson made it. Madison codified it. Reagan built a political movement on it.

It is worth asking what that principle means when the governor of West Virginia jets across the country collecting checks from Pennsylvania billionaires and New York hedge fund managers, then uses that money to tell Wood County, Greenbrier County, and Harrison County voters that their Republican legislators are not Republican enough.

Former lawmaker Roman Prezioso, a Democrat who served over 30 years in the Legislature, put the political reality bluntly: if the governor campaigns against incumbents who then win, he will never get his agenda passed. “If he doesn’t kill the king,” Prezioso said, “he’s dead in the water when it’s time for his reelection too.”

That is the gamble Morrisey is taking. He is using an enormous outside money advantage to attempt to permanently reshape the West Virginia Senate and House in his image before the clock runs out on his first term. The question Republican primary voters in every affected district should be asking is a simple one: if these legislators are replaced, who will those new members answer to?

The checks have already been written. The answer is not hard to find.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

Over the weekend, the committee published an open letter to their Republican friends and neighbors, citing Governor Patrick Morrisey’s decision to endorse primary challenger Jonathan Comer over sitting State Senator Vince Deeds in Senate District 10. The letter did not attack Morrisey. It did not tout a Democratic candidate or a Democratic platform. It did not make a single policy argument. It simply said: if you are frustrated, the door is open.

Give them credit for discipline. The letter sidesteps every partisan tripwire that would have caused most Nicholas County Republicans to crumple it up and toss it before finishing the second paragraph. No gun control. No abortion. No lectures about democracy. Just a warm hand extended toward the aisle and a gentle suggestion that maybe, just maybe, the chaos across the street is not your fault.

That is a low bar. But in deep-red West Virginia, low bars are sometimes the only ones worth jumping.

A Signal About the GOP, Not a Statement About Democrats

Let us be honest about what this letter is and what it is not. It is not evidence of a Democratic resurgence in Nicholas County. It is not a sign that West Virginia’s political realignment is reversing. Nicholas County has not sent a Democrat to meaningful state office in years, and one sympathetic open letter is not going to change that math.

What it is, is a referendum on how bad the Republican infighting looks from the outside. Governor Morrisey’s strategy of parachuting into Republican primaries to endorse challengers against his own party’s incumbents has generated genuine resentment across the state. The Deeds-Comer race in Senate District 10 is one of the more combustible examples. When the Nicholas County Democrats cite that race by name in a recruitment letter, it is because they have done the math and concluded that Morrisey’s interference is their single best available wedge heading into 2026.

Think about that for a moment. The opposing party’s best pitch to your voters is not their own agenda. It is your governor picking fights with your own senators. That is the kind of recruitment letter that writes itself, and the Nicholas County Democrats were smart enough to let it.

What Republicans Should Take From This

Republicans in Nicholas County and across Senate District 10 should not lose sleep over this letter. The voters most likely to be fired up about Morrisey’s primary meddling are also the most institutionally Republican in the state. They will grumble loudly at the Lincoln Day Dinners, post things on Facebook, and then pull the lever for the Republican nominee in November. That is what they do because this is Republican country, through and through.

But the letter is still worth reading carefully, because it functions as a mirror. When your internal disputes are so public, so sustained, and so bitter that the other party feels comfortable using them as the entire premise of a voter outreach campaign, you have a problem that goes beyond any single primary race. The Republican civil war over Morrisey’s endorsement strategy is not just a story being told inside the party. It is a story being told about the party, by its opponents, directly to its own voters.

That is the real headline. Not that Democrats are coming for Nicholas County, because they are not. But that the GOP’s fractures have become so visible that they now serve as someone else’s campaign material. A party that cannot settle its own house eventually finds that other people start describing the mess, and not kindly.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

Public records and a transaction document associated with the subsequent sale of Pack’s Stonerise nursing home portfolio indicate that his nursing home business stood to benefit materially from the continued existence of CON restrictions.

The CON Vote and the Platform

Certificate of Need laws require state approval before a healthcare provider can open a new facility, add beds, or expand services. The practical effect is limiting competition and protecting existing license holders from new entrants. The previous WV GOP platform backed CON repeal on free market grounds. Heather Glasko-Tully, a former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates who worked on CON repeal legislation, described Pack’s floor speech against repeal as one of the most aggressive she witnessed directed at members of his own caucus.

Pack voted against CON repeal while serving as a Delegate. His vote helped preserve a regulatory framework under which he operated a portfolio of licensed nursing home facilities. Repeal would have allowed new competitors to enter the market. His vote prevented that.

The Stonerise Sale: What the Transaction Document Shows

A document associated with the sale of Pack’s Stonerise nursing home portfolio, published by Lument, a healthcare finance firm, cited West Virginia’s CON restrictions as a direct contributor to the portfolio’s value. The document noted that the state had issued no new nursing home licenses in the current century and that the resulting scarcity of beds drove occupancy above 90 percent across the portfolio.

The document also noted that West Virginia carries some of the highest Medicaid reimbursement rates in the country, a factor relevant to the portfolio’s revenue stability.

Taken together: Pack voted to maintain a government-enforced limit on competition in the market where he operated. That limit reduced the supply of nursing home beds in the state, drove up occupancy at existing facilities including his own, and was explicitly cited as a value driver when he sold the portfolio.

The Committee for Integrity in Government

A State Political Action Committee registered with the West Virginia Secretary of State under the name Committee for Integrity in Government is listed as active under the 2020 committee election cycle. Campaign finance contribution records on file with the Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance Reporting System show the following:

Pack family members account for a significant share of the PAC’s funding. The PAC directed expenditures toward races involving Republican primary candidates. But not only Republican candidates. The PAC also used its funding to assist Democratic Party Mayor of Charleston, Amy Shuler Goodwin. Pack is not listed as an organizer of the committee.

Republican officials in West Virginia have raised concerns in other contexts about the use of PAC structures to obscure the source of political spending. The contribution records here are public and sourced directly from the Secretary of State’s system.

What the Records Show

The documented record contains three elements that, taken together, warrant scrutiny from Republican activists and party officials:

First, Pack voted against CON repeal while the WV GOP platform supported it, and while holding a direct financial stake in the industry the reform would have opened to competition.

Second, the transaction documents associated with his subsequent sale of that industry stake explicitly cite the regulatory protection his vote helped preserve as a contributor to the portfolio’s market value.

Third, campaign finance records show Pack family members as the primary funders of a PAC that directed money into Republican primary races.

Why This Matters

The WV WASP is not in the business of telling Republican activists who to support or which party figures to trust. That is not the purpose of this report.

The purpose is this: the West Virginia Republican Party has a stated interest in holding its own leadership to the same standards it applies to others. Pack occupies a formal leadership position within that party structure. The documented record raises a straightforward question about whether his conduct in office, his financial interests, and his use of political money are consistent with the role he holds.

Party activists and officials are in the best position to evaluate that question. The WV WASP published this report to make sure they have the information necessary to do so.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

Governor Patrick Morrisey is spending political capital at a remarkable clip this primary season. He is endorsing in contested Republican legislative primaries across the state, inserting himself into intraparty races where most governors, most of the time, choose to stay generally neutral. The question worth asking is not whether he has the right to spend his capital. He does. The question is whether he is spending it wisely, or whether he is chasing a reflection.

Political capital is real currency. It accumulates through elections won, relationships built, and goodwill extended. It depletes through controversial decisions, broken alliances, and bridges burned. Every politician carries a finite supply of it. How they choose to spend it tells you everything about their judgment, their priorities, and their theory of power.

Morrisey’s theory, as best it can be read, is ideological. He is not simply rewarding loyalists or punishing enemies for sport. He appears to believe that endorsing certain candidates will produce a legislative majority more aligned with his governing agenda, one that will move his priorities forward with greater speed and reliability. That is, at minimum, a coherent rationale. It is also a significant gamble.

A Scene at the Monroe County Republican Dinner

The endorsement strategy became impossible to ignore at the Monroe County Republican Dinner, where Morrisey publicly backed Jonathan Comer over incumbent State Senator Vince Deeds while Deeds himself sat in the room. What followed was described by an eyewitness as something between a broadside and a bolt for the exit.

Steve Dunford, a member of the Greenbrier County Republican Executive Committee who was present that night, posted this account publicly:

“I just want to say what I witnessed our Governor of West Virginia, Patrick Morrisey, do tonight at the Monroe County Republican Dinner was so uncalled for and so unprofessional for a sitting Governor to do. Our Governor came to supposedly speak and then proceeded to tell the room that he is supporting another candidate over a truly proven and godly man and incumbent Senator Vince Deeds, while Vince and the Greenbrier County Executive Committee members who were in attendance sitting there is totally unacceptable! He praised the other candidate, and then when he was done, both he and the First Lady ran out and left. Let’s just say us Executive Committee Members were pretty upset and furious.”

Dunford is not a political outsider. He is a party officer, a Greenbrier County executive committee member, a Republican activist in Vince Deeds’ home territory. His reaction represents the precise constituency a governor cannot afford to alienate if he expects to govern effectively for four years.

The County Chairs Speak, Then Go Quiet

The fallout did not stop with rank-and-file committee members. Ben Anderson, the chairman of the county chairs association within the WVGOP and the Greenbrier County Republican chairman, posted a statement that was widely understood to refer to the campaign apparatus operated by the Morriseys. Anderson wrote:

“The Greenbrier County Republican Executive Committee will not be endorsing this primary. We do, however, express our profound disappointment at out-of-state influences spreading lies in our district, as well as statewide leadership (directing these out-of-state influences) who have chosen to break Reagan’s 11th Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.’ Our primaries should be decided by the people, not by those with ulterior motives and deceptive interests. Keep your eyes open, your ears peeled, and your spirit clean.”

Reagan’s 11th Commandment exists for a reason. Primary wounds, inflicted publicly and with the authority of the governor’s office behind them, do not heal quickly. The activists, committee members, and county chairs who watch a sitting governor come into their territory, endorse against their incumbent, and leave before the conversation can happen are not people who forget easily.

The Majority He May Never See

Here is the core problem with Morrisey’s theory of the case. He is burning significant political capital, real and finite currency, in pursuit of a legislative majority that may never materialize in the form he envisions. West Virginia’s legislative map is not so malleable that a handful of primary wins will hand him a governing coalition built entirely from personal loyalty. The legislature has its own institutional culture, its own leadership structures, and its own members who have been there far longer than any governor’s endorsement operation.

The dog in Aesop’s fable did not lose his bone through stupidity. He lost it through fixation on something that looked better than what he already had. Morrisey came to the governorship with some measure of political capital: a statewide election win, a party unified enough to celebrate it, and a goodwill account funded by years of service as Attorney General. That capital was real. It was in his mouth.

What he is chasing is the reflection of a compliant legislature, a governing majority that will move his agenda without friction. It is an understandable thing to want. But the manner in which he is pursuing it, publicly humiliating incumbents, directing out-of-state campaign pressure into local Republican communities, and breaking the basic norms of intraparty conduct, is costing him the relationships he will need whether he wins those primaries or not.

If his endorsed candidates win, he will have legislators who owe him a debt. But he will also have a party apparatus full of county chairs, committee members, and local activists who watched how he operates and drew their conclusions. If his endorsed candidates lose, he will have spent all of that capital for nothing, and the legislators who survived his opposition will remember it for the rest of his term.

Either way, the bone he started with is getting harder to see.

The WASP’s Assessment

Governors who govern well do so because they understand that political capital is not inexhaustible, and that the party infrastructure beneath them is not a tool to be wielded at will. It is a coalition to be maintained. The county chairs, the executive committee members, the local activists who spend their evenings at Republican dinners in Monroe and Greenbrier counties are not obstacles to Morrisey’s agenda. They are its foundation.

What this governor appears to have decided is that those people will fall in line regardless of how they are treated, because they are Republicans, and he is their governor. That is a theory of politics built on a very shaky assumption. West Virginia Republicans have demonstrated, repeatedly, that they are not a monolith. They have institutional memories, personal loyalties, and a deep and genuine commitment to the idea that primaries belong to the people.

Ben Anderson said it plainly: our primaries should be decided by the people, not by those with ulterior motives and deceptive interests.

Patrick Morrisey still has his term to finish. How he spends his political capital now will determine whether his term produces a governing legacy or a cautionary tale. Right now, he is staring at his reflection in the water, convinced it is something worth having.

The WV WASP will be watching to see if he drops the bone.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

The Rule and the Reason for It

There is a rule in federal campaign finance law that most voters take for granted: a super PAC may raise and spend unlimited money in support of a candidate, but only if it operates independently of that candidate’s campaign. The independence is not a technicality. It is the entire constitutional and legal basis on which super PACs are permitted to exist at all.

The rule exists because unlimited money concentrated in a single political operation, coordinated with the candidate it benefits, creates a structural corruption risk that courts and regulators have long recognized. The independence requirement is the firewall. Remove it and what remains is an unlimited campaign treasury with no disclosure requirements and no contribution limits, operated by the same people running the official campaign.

Public filings from the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office describe a political apparatus built around Governor Patrick Morrisey in which that firewall may exist only on paper. At its center is a single name that appears across the campaign, the super PAC, and the state political committee simultaneously: David Howell.

David Howell’s Three Hats

According to records filed with the West Virginia Secretary of State, David Howell held the following roles concurrently within the Morrisey political network:

• Director of Morrisey 2024, Inc. The official campaign corporation for Morrisey’s 2024 gubernatorial run. This is the entity that pays staff, produces advertising, manages the candidate’s schedule, and coordinates all official campaign activity.

• Director of Black Bear PAC. A federal super PAC that, alongside the Club for Growth, pledged to spend more than ten million dollars supporting Morrisey’s governor’s race. Black Bear ran advertisements supporting Morrisey and attacking his opponents throughout the primary and general election. Its FEC filings list Scott Will as a senior adviser, but Howell appears as a director of the committee itself.

• Chairman of Blue and Gold PAC. A West Virginia state 527 political committee within the Morrisey network, separate from the federal entities but part of the same coordinated infrastructure.

The overlap is not incidental. Howell was not a peripheral figure who happened to hold a nominal title in one entity while doing real work in another. By the account of the filings, he was a director-level presence across all three structures at the same time, serving a single candidate’s political interests through each of them.

The relevant legal standard is not ambiguous. Super PACs are constitutionally permissible under Citizens United and subsequent rulings only because the Supreme Court accepted the premise that independently spent money poses less risk of corruption than direct contributions. The moment that independence collapses, so does the legal rationale for permitting the unlimited spending in the first place.

A director who simultaneously controls both the candidate’s official campaign corporation and the super PAC spending millions on that candidate’s behalf is not, in any meaningful operational sense, independent. The same judgment, the same institutional loyalty, and the same strategic interests govern decisions on both sides of the supposed firewall.

The WV WASP sought comment from David Howell and from the Morrisey administration’s press office. No response was received prior to publication.

Beverly, Massachusetts

Howell’s overlapping roles do not exist in isolation. They are embedded in a broader infrastructure that raises its own questions about where West Virginia’s political operation actually lives.

Data compiled from public filings identifies a single city shared by virtually every major financial entity in the Morrisey network: Beverly, MA. That city appears as the registered location for Morrisey 2024, Inc., Black Bear PAC, the Blue and Gold Fund (a federal leadership PAC), Blue and Gold PAC (the state 527), Team Morrisey JFC (a joint fundraising committee), the WV Prosperity Group, Sugar Maple PAC, and Bulldog Compliance. The financial infrastructure of West Virginia’s governor’s political operation does not live in West Virginia.

The compliance infrastructure is managed by two Massachusetts-based operatives, Bradley Crate and Charles Gantt. Neither is a West Virginia figure.

Scott Will, a senior adviser to Black Bear PAC and Morrisey’s 2012 campaign manager, has been a fixture throughout the network’s development. Will also served as a paid transition consultant after Morrisey’s November 2024 election win, moving seamlessly between the super PAC advisory role and the governor’s formal transition apparatus. When the governor’s office launched the West Virginia Prosperity Group to manage his post-election transition, Will was identified in reporting as the operative in charge.

The picture that emerges is not of a West Virginia political operation. It is a Massachusetts-administered machine with West Virginia on the label.

The Money Trail

The financial flows within the network add another layer of concern on top of the structural overlap.

Black Bear PAC was built primarily on national money. The Club for Growth Action contributed $2.1 million in a single transaction during the first half of 2023, representing nearly the entirety of the PAC’s fundraising for that period. By mid-2023, Black Bear had $3.8 million in cash on hand, with both Black Bear and Club for Growth having publicly committed to a combined goal of more than $10 million in support of Morrisey’s governor’s race.

That same Black Bear PAC, where Howell sits as director, received $125,000 from the West Virginia Prosperity Group on December 29, 2025, seven months after the Prosperity Group had received $500,000 from Morrisey’s own inaugural committee. The money moved from inauguration funds to the West Virginia Prosperity Group (the WVPG is incorporated under IRS code as a social welfare organization -- the same designation that allows groups like it to engage in political activity without disclosing their donors), then from that organization to the super PAC.

Under West Virginia law, inaugural committees with leftover funds must donate the excess to charity. The Secretary of State’s office has previously indicated that social welfare organizations qualify as charities under that definition. Once donated, the office has said, the law no longer governs how the money is used. The Prosperity Group’s board has not disclosed the source of its remaining funding beyond the inaugural committee contribution.

Woven into this network is a second pass-through entity: the 1925 Fund Inc., a 501(c)(4) with no listed officers and no public presence, through which $9.2 million appears to have flowed. The inaugural committee also donated $125,000 to the 1925 Fund. Scott Will has been identified in prior reporting as the operative in charge of the 1925 Fund as well. A social welfare organization with no public officers, no website, and nine million dollars in reported flows, administered by the same man who advises the super PAC whose director also runs the campaign.

The legal walls between these entities are asserted on paper. Whether they exist in practice is the question the filings raise.

Now Targeting the Legislature

What began as a governor’s political operation has expanded. The network documented in public filings is now actively engaged in 2026 Republican primary races for the state legislature.

Chris Pritt, who served as Campaign President of Morrisey 2024, Inc. during the governor’s race, is now a candidate for the Republican nomination in Senate District 17, running against incumbent Senator Tom Takubo. Public filings show outside groups aligned with the Morrisey network, including the School Freedom Fund and the Mountaineer Conservative Coalition, spending in support of Pritt’s campaign. The same operative infrastructure that managed Morrisey’s campaign is now working its own alumni into legislative seats.

In Senate District 10, Sugar Maple PAC has reported at least $16,473 in spending to support Jonathan Comer’s candidacy. Sugar Maple PAC is managed by Charles Gantt as treasurer, the same Beverly, Massachusetts compliance operative who manages the right side of the Morrisey financial network.

And then there is Tresa Howell, a candidate for House Delegate District 52. Tresa Howell is David Howell’s wife.

The same David Howell who simultaneously directs the governor’s campaign corporation and the super PAC that spent millions electing that governor has a spouse running for a legislative seat that falls within the network’s expanding 2026 footprint. Whether that candidacy has received direct network support is something we intend to pursue through public filings.

The network is building a legislative caucus.

What the Law Says and What the Filings Show

The WV WASP is not a court and will not render a legal verdict. What the public record shows is this:

Federal law prohibits coordination between a candidate’s authorized campaign committee and an outside group spending money in support of that candidate. The Federal Election Commission defines coordination broadly to include shared personnel, shared decision-making, and material involvement by campaign officials in the outside group’s activities.

The public filings show a single individual holding director-level roles in both Morrisey’s official campaign corporation and the super PAC that spent millions supporting his candidacy. They show those entities sharing an address, sharing compliance infrastructure, and operating within a network that has moved money from inaugural funds through pass-through nonprofits and back into the super PAC.

Morrisey himself is not listed as a direct officer or director of the outside entities. That is how these structures are designed. The buffer is legal architecture. Whether it reflects operational reality is the gap between the filing and the truth.

The FEC received no public complaint regarding the Morrisey network’s structure as of the time of this reporting. The agency’s enforcement record on coordination cases is limited. West Virginia’s own campaign finance laws do not impose restrictions on coordination between campaigns and state-level political committees that go beyond federal requirements.

Which means that what is described in these filings may be entirely legal. It may also be exactly what campaign finance law was designed to prevent.

What Republican Primary Voters Should Know

This is not a story about Democrats scrutinizing a Republican governor. West Virginia has not had a Democratic governor in a decade. The network described in these filings is a Republican operation, built with Republican money, now being turned on Republican incumbent legislators in the May 12 primary.

The senators targeted by Morrisey-aligned groups are Republicans. The incumbents being challenged by Pritt and Comer are Republicans. The voters who will decide those races are Republican primary voters.

Those voters deserve to know who is spending money in their primaries, who controls that spending, and whether the men and women asking for their votes are backed by a network whose legal independence from the sitting governor’s office rests on the word of the same small group of Massachusetts compliance professionals who have managed his finances from the beginning.

The structure is public. The filings are available. The question of what it all means is one West Virginia Republicans have every right to ask before they cast a ballot.

EDITOR’S NOTE

This article is based on public filings with the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the West Virginia Secretary of State’s office. Readers with additional documentation regarding the entities described in this report are encouraged to contact the WASP securely.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

On April 7, 2026, the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals issued a writ of prohibition in State v. Young, No. 25-371, reversing the circuit court’s dismissal of the indictment against King and Maynard. The 4-1 majority, authored by Chief Justice Bunn, held that election law violations are governed by a five-year statute of limitations under West Virginia Code Section 3-9-24, not the one-year general misdemeanor clock the circuit court had applied. The ruling is a significant precedent, establishing that West Virginia’s Election Code carries its own, longer window for prosecution and that the state’s long-standing one-year misdemeanor limitations period does not override it for election-specific offenses.

Justice Trump dissented alone, arguing the lower court had not committed the kind of clear legal error that would justify the extraordinary remedy of a writ of prohibition.

For King and Maynard, the decision means their case returns to criminal court. The indictment charges each woman with one count of false swearing and one count of aiding and abetting the other to commit false swearing, all misdemeanors under the Election Code. A fifth count, misdemeanor conspiracy under the general criminal code, was conceded by the State as time-barred and is not being revived. The alleged offense at the heart of the remaining charges: knowingly certifying District 1 residency while living elsewhere.

They Were in the Room

According to Cabell County Commissioner Kelli Sobonya, who detailed the history in a public social media post, the story begins not with the 2022 filing but with a redistricting meeting held years earlier, when the County Commission redrew its magisterial district boundaries as required every decade following the census.

King and Maynard were both present at that meeting. They spoke.

“The two attended the meeting when the County Commission was doing their part as every governmental body does every 10 years to adjust the boundaries based upon population shifts,” Sobonya wrote. “The new map that was adopted was on full display at the meeting they attended. They even spoke out against the map that was adopted (on recording) and thus was aware of the district lines.”

That recorded testimony, Sobonya contends, eliminates any credible claim of ignorance about district lines when the women later filed their candidate papers.

West Virginia Code Section 7-1-1 governs the structure of county commissions and limits representation from any single magisterial district. The geographic residency requirement is not a technicality. It exists, as Sobonya noted, to ensure that no single district dominates the county commission. King and Maynard, if they lived in Districts 2 and 3, were not eligible to seek a District 1 seat in 2022. According to Sobonya, they filed to run against incumbent Commissioner Jim Morgan despite being ineligible under the residency rules.

The Smoking Gun: Two Different Filings

Perhaps the most damaging detail in Sobonya’s account is not the redistricting meeting attendance but a discrepancy in the women’s own filings. In addition to running for the Cabell County Commission, both King and Maynard filed to run for their county Republican executive committee positions. According to Sobonya, those executive committee filings were based on voting precincts that were entirely different from the precinct they used when filing for the commission race.

“Ironically, they both filed to run for the county Republican executive committee where the voting precincts were totally different from their filing for commission,” Sobonya wrote, “thus evidence that they were filing for commission in the wrong district.”

In other words, the argument goes, King and Maynard knew precisely where they lived when it suited the filing at hand and chose to file in a different district for the commission race. Prosecutors are expected to present that discrepancy as evidence of intent.

Warnings Ignored

The Secretary of State’s investigation surfaced the residency problem before ballots were printed. Sobonya says the former Cabell County Clerk gave both women what she described as “ample time” to voluntarily withdraw from the race. The deadline was pegged to ballot printing, which creates a hard cutoff after which removal becomes far more complicated.

King and Maynard refused to withdraw.

“They were given ample time by the former clerk to remove themselves from the ballot since they were ineligible,” Sobonya said. “They were told if they did not take themselves off the ballot by a certain time (before the ballots were printed), which was a violation of election law, that they would be recommended for prosecution.”

When the deadline passed without action from either woman, the bipartisan ballot commissioners intervened and removed them from the ballot. The matter was referred for prosecution.

The Federal Lawsuit

What happened next drew Sobonya’s sharpest criticism. Rather than accepting removal from the ballot, King and Maynard filed civil lawsuits in Cabell County circuit court in 2023, alleging their constitutional rights had been violated and arguing that the residency statute itself was discriminatory. Those cases were removed to federal court and dismissed in 2024.

“They subsequently sued the county commission (taxpayers) civilly alleging pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment in life that went before a federal judge,” Sobonya wrote. “It was subsequently dismissed, but cost the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars not to mention clogging up our federal courts frivolously.”

The cost to Cabell County taxpayers was not vague: the county paid more than $38,000 in legal fees defending against the suits, according to prior reporting by the West Virginia Record. King and Maynard could not be reached for comment.

The Indictment, the Dismissal, and the Writ

A Cabell County grand jury indicted King and Maynard on April 7, 2025, nearly three years after the alleged offenses. The indictment came in at more than one year but less than five years from the February 2022 filing date. That timing put the case directly in the crosshairs of the statute of limitations conflict the circuit court would later have to resolve.

The circuit court, with Judge James Young sitting by special assignment from Wayne County, dismissed the indictment. The court reasoned that because West Virginia Code Section 61-11-9 had been amended more recently than the Election Code’s five-year provision, the one-year general misdemeanor clock governed and the prosecution was too late.

The State, represented by Attorney General John McCuskey’s office, sought a writ of prohibition from the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court’s Answer

Chief Justice Bunn’s majority opinion rejected the circuit court’s analysis on multiple grounds. The core holding is straightforward: when two statutes address the same conduct and one is general while the other is specific, the specific statute controls, regardless of which was amended more recently. The Election Code’s five-year window at Section 3-9-24 speaks specifically to “any crime or offense under any provision of this chapter,” and the Legislature populated Chapter 3 with both felonies and misdemeanors. There is no ambiguity about its application to misdemeanor election offenses.

The majority found that the circuit court had manufactured a conflict between the statutes where none existed, then reached for a last-in-time tiebreaker it was not entitled to use. The court held that applying the general misdemeanor limitations period to dismiss an Election Code prosecution effectively repealed Section 3-9-24 by implication, a result West Virginia law disfavors and the facts of this case did not require.

Justice Trump’s dissent offered a methodical counter-argument rooted in legislative history. Trump traced the Election Code’s limitations period back to 1908, through the comprehensive 1963 rewrite, and into the 1978 amendment that changed the window from one year to five. The dissent’s position: the Legislature knows how to write “notwithstanding any provision of this code to the contrary” language when it wants one statute to override another, pointing to similar provisions in the Tax Code, the Environmental Protection statutes, and the Bribery and Corrupt Practices Act. Section 3-9-24 contains no such language. Trump argued the circuit court’s decision was at worst a reasonable reading of genuinely ambiguous law, not the kind of clear error that would warrant the extraordinary remedy of prohibition.

The majority prevailed four to one. The writ was granted. The indictment stands.

What Comes Next

With the writ issued, the case returns to circuit court for trial. King and Maynard have not been convicted of anything. They are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and the legal question now shifts from statutes of limitations to whether the State can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that each woman knowingly filed a false statement when she certified her District 1 residency.

The prosecution could point to the redistricting meeting, the recorded objections to the new map, and the discrepancy between the commission filing precinct and the Republican executive committee filing precinct. Sobonya frames those facts as evidence of knowing intent. Whether they are sufficient for a conviction is a question for a jury.

Sobonya, for her part, offered a preview of how the case will be framed for the public.

“The Supreme Court recently ruled that the criminal case would move forward to criminal court,” she wrote. “Stay tuned.”

King and Maynard did not respond to requests for comment. Their attorneys, if retained for the criminal matter, had not entered public appearances as of publication.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

Those words did not come from a Democrat. They came from Delegate Michael Hite (R-Berkeley), a sitting Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, speaking publicly on WRNR TV about Governor Patrick Morrisey. The video leaves nothing to interpretation.

Hite did not stop there. “Going after good, and I mean good, legislators,” he continued. “Senator Vince Deeds, salt of the earth. This guy is a great great man and a very good senator. I just don’t understand it. Clay Riley, one of the smartest people in the legislature and he’s running ads against him. I just don’t get any of this.”

Then came the gut punch: “I think Vernon Criss and Scot Heckert had it right from the get-go. This was a terrible choice. I wish I could take my vote back.”

Criss (R-Wood) is the Chairman of the House Finance Committee. Heckert (R-Wood) is chair of the House Public Health Subcommittee. Both men opposed Morrisey’s bid for governor. Both have since been proven right in the eyes of a growing number of their colleagues. Criss has been so public in his disdain for the governor’s carpetbagger status that he routinely refers to Morrisey as “the gentleman from New Jersey.” It is not meant as a compliment.

The Proxy War

Make no mistake: there is a proxy war happening inside the West Virginia Republican Party. The combatants are Governor Patrick Morrisey, the former Attorney General who won the governorship but has struggled to consolidate power, and U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, the born-and-bred Mountain State institution who commands the loyalty of the party’s mainstream wing.

Both have solid Republican credentials. Both are publicly supporting opposing candidates in contested West Virginia Senate and House primaries ahead of the May 12 election. And both know exactly what they are doing.

The personal dimension matters here. In the 2024 Republican gubernatorial primary, Morrisey defeated Moore Capito, the senator’s son. That victory did not come without cost to the relationship. Senator Capito received over 83% of the vote in her most recent Republican primary. Morrisey, in his most recent contested primary, received just 33%. The contrast in political standing within the state Republican Party could not be starker.

Morrisey Fires First

Morrisey moved first, publicly endorsing Jonathan Comer, a Lewisburg Baptist pastor, against incumbent Sen. Vince Deeds (R-Greenbrier) in Senate District 10. The governor framed his intervention in ideological terms, accusing a “group of status quo, liberal legislators” of opposing his “conservative, pro-Trump policies every step of the way.” He called Comer a “change agent.” He did not specify which policies Deeds had blocked.

It is worth noting that Comer is related to Kevin Comer, Morrisey’s own constituent services liaison in the governor’s office. That connection has not gone unnoticed in Charleston.

Deeds, who also happens to be a Baptist pastor, a retired state trooper, and the chief investigator for the Greenbrier County Prosecutor’s Office, responded with measured restraint. “The governor can do whatever he chooses,” Deeds said. “But I am resolved to remain committed to my district.”

Morrisey has since announced more endorsements are coming and made clear he intends to reshape the Republican legislative caucus in his image. He has publicly called sitting Republican legislators “RINOs” and dispatched the Morrisey campaign apparatus to run ads against delegates and senators who have not shown sufficient loyalty to his agenda. One of those targets is Delegate Clay Riley (R-Harrison, 72), the Vice Chairman of the House Finance Committee, who now faces a primary challenger while ads funded by Morrisey-aligned interests run against him.

Brad McElhinny of WV MetroNews also broke the story that Morrisey has been linked to a political action committee running attack ads against Sen. Tom Takubo (R-Kanawha), who is facing a primary challenge from former delegate Chris Pritt in Senate District 17. The ads falsely characterized Takubo’s 2021 vote on the Save Women’s Sports Act. Takubo voted against the bill not because he opposed its intent, but because he believed collegiate athletics should be regulated at the federal level rather than by state law.

Capito Responds

Senator Capito did not sit idle. She has countered with a volley of her own endorsements, each one a direct rebuke of Morrisey’s positioning. Capito endorsed incumbent Sen. Vince Deeds in Senate District 10, putting her squarely against Morrisey’s handpicked candidate in that race. She also endorsed Bob Farnbacher in his challenge against Sen. Michael Azinger in Senate District 3, and backed Michael Antolini against Sen. Rollan Roberts in Senate District 9. More endorsements from the senator are expected before the May 12 primary.

Neither Governor Morrisey’s office nor Senator Capito’s office responded to requests for comment from The WV WASP.

A Governor Running Out of Friends

The bluntness of Delegate Hite’s remarks on camera is striking, but sources with direct knowledge of the mood in the Republican caucus tell The WV WASP it is not surprising. According to sources speaking on background, Morrisey’s list of genuine legislative allies is very small, and the governor is alienating more members than he fully understands.

That assessment is consistent with what has played out publicly over the past year. Morrisey entered office with an aggressive posture toward the Legislature, deploying lobbyists to pressure delegates on his priority bills, publicly disparaging lawmakers who resisted, and in at least one documented case, withholding Legislative Economic Development Assistance funds from delegates who voted against his agenda. Delegates Heckert and Criss were among those who raised the alarm, with Heckert saying publicly that the governor’s approach amounted to political retaliation. “If you don’t agree with the governor or vote the way the administration wants you to vote, they’re going to find a way to try to punish you,” Heckert said at the time.

Morrisey’s own 2025 legislative session illustrated the problem. Despite a Republican supermajority, many of the governor’s priority bills were defeated or substantially watered down. His attempt to fully repeal the state’s certificate of need program failed. His vaccine exemption legislation was voted down in the House. A MetroNews commentary at the time drew a pointed contrast: Morrisey, unlike Donald Trump, does not command the kind of unconditional loyalty that bends a caucus to the executive’s will. West Virginia Republicans, as Heckert put it, do not respond well to being told what to do “or else.”

The governor’s strategy of going directly to primary voters to replace resistant legislators carries enormous risk. If his endorsed candidates lose, Morrisey will have burned relationships across the caucus for nothing. If they win, he will have made enemies of their predecessors’ friends and allies. Either way, he will have broken Ronald Reagan’s informal Eleventh Commandment to never speak ill of a fellow Republican, and done so loudly, in writing, on social media, with his name attached.

What It Means

The Morrisey-Capito conflict is not simply a personality clash. It is a contest over the ideological and structural direction of West Virginia Republicanism. Morrisey wants a Legislature that executes his agenda without friction. Capito, whose political roots in this state run far deeper than the governor’s, appears to be drawing a line on behalf of the institutional Republican Party and its legislators.

The May 12 primary will be a referendum on which vision of West Virginia Republicanism has more currency with the voters who actually show up. Morrisey is betting that his pro-Trump branding will be enough to move primary electorates against incumbent Republicans backed by the most popular figure in state politics. That is a significant bet.

If Delegate Hite is any indication of where Republican sentiment is heading behind closed doors, Morrisey may be underestimating just how many of his own party members wish they could take their votes back.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, satire, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X: @wvwasp | wvwasp.com 🐝

This is a data point about where West Virginia is politically in 2026.

The Proposals

On April 3, the Freedom Caucus called on Morrisey to use executive authority to declare an emergency and suspend all state fuel taxes for 90 days, no special session required. The pitch was straightforward. “Cut the tax. Let people keep their money,” said Senator Craig Hart. “When government makes everything more expensive, the least it can do is get out of the way,” said Freedom Caucus Chairman S. Chris Anders.

House Democrats followed with a legislative approach, calling for a special session to suspend the state motor fuel excise tax, currently averaging 36 cents per gallon. Their proposal includes a market-based trigger tied to pre-war (Iran) wholesale price baselines, with an automatic reinstatement when prices stabilize and a hard expiration date of January 1, 2027. Minority Leader Sean Hornbuckle framed it in terms of immediate relief for working families. The caucus pointed to Georgia, which signed a 60-day suspension and saw gas prices fall.

Gas prices in West Virginia are averaging around $3.99 per gallon, up roughly 23 percent from $3.10 a year ago, according to AAA. Democrats estimate the war-driven price spike has cost West Virginia families $41 million in additional fuel costs since February 28.

The More Interesting Story

The policy details matter. But the more interesting story is what the Democratic proposal reveals about the state of play in West Virginia politics.

West Virginia has not been a competitive state in a statewide race in years. Republicans hold every constitutional office, a commanding majority in both chambers of the Legislature, and every congressional seat. The Democratic caucus in the House is a minority with limited ability to move legislation on its own. Calling for a special session is, in practical terms, a political statement more than a legislative strategy.

So what statement are they making? A tax cut argument.

Framed around working families, immediate relief, and the inadequacy of a Republican-passed income tax reduction that they contend benefited the wealthy more than working people. Delegate John Williams put it plainly: “We just gave out a $300 million tax cut that’s going to largely benefit rich people. Why can’t we pass something that will affect average West Virginians who are paying too much at the pump?”

That is the language of economic populism, competing on terrain that Republicans have cultivated in West Virginia for a decade.

Pushkin’s Answers Are Telling

West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman and Delegate Mike Pushkin answered questions from The WV WASP about the proposal and the politics behind it. His answers are very interesting and worth examining closely.

Asked whether Democrats worried the proposal gave Republicans an opening to say the party had come around to their way of thinking, Pushkin rejected the premise. “Democrats have always been focused on helping working people. That’s not new, and it’s not a shift.” He drew the distinction on who benefits: Democrats cut taxes for working people, Republicans cut taxes for the wealthy.

Asked how the gas tax suspension differed philosophically from the income tax cut Democrats opposed, Pushkin said the income tax cut was regressive, while the gas tax relief targets working people directly. “Their approach sends money up the ladder,” he said. “Ours puts money back into the real economy.”

Those are defensible arguments. But look at the ground they’re made on. Pushkin is arguing for better-targeted tax cuts, accepting the framework that tax relief is the right tool and debating only the aim. The chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party is making a supply-side-adjacent argument dressed in populist language, and doing so because that is where persuadable West Virginia voters live.

Holstein’s Response

WVGOP Chairman Josh Holstein offered a pointed assessment when contacted by The WV WASP.

“Democrats in West Virginia are in a downward spiral and have been reduced to little more than a minor party with diminishing influence across the state,” Holstein said.

He pointed to the Republican tax record as evidence of which party has actually delivered for working families. “We’ve cut the state income tax by roughly one third, with more on the way, provided a 100% rebate on the motor vehicle property tax, eliminated state taxes on Social Security income, enacted property tax relief for disabled veterans, and expanded tax credits to support small businesses and economic growth.”

Holstein also cited the federal Republican record under President Trump, including tax cuts on overtime, Social Security, and tips, an expanded standard deduction and child tax credit, and a deduction on interest for auto loans on American vehicles.

On the Democratic proposal itself, Holstein was direct: “Democrats continue to play political games in an effort to undermine the Commander-in-Chief’s action to protect the United States from global threats and to try to become relevant again. West Virginians are wise to those games.”

That last line is the sharpest signal yet of how Republicans intend to frame Democratic engagement on gas prices. The Iran war is baked into the Democratic proposal by design, since their market trigger is pegged to pre-war price baselines. Holstein is making sure voters understand that connection.

What the Realignment Does to a Minority Party

Holstein and Pushkin will continue that argument on their own terms. What the back-and-forth between two party chairmen should not obscure is something more structural happening in West Virginia politics.

Political parties adapt to survive, and survival requires speaking the language of persuadable voters. In a state where Republicans win districts by 30 points, the path to relevance runs through economic populism pitched at working-class voters who have drifted right on culture but still respond to straight talk about prices, costs, and who the tax code actually serves.

Pushkin acknowledged as much when asked how Democrats message tax relief in heavily Republican districts. “Voters in those districts aren’t looking for a slogan. They want straight talk about what’s actually happening in their lives,” he said. “People know what they’re paying.”

That is an accurate read of the West Virginia electorate. It is also a description of a party that has internalized, at least on economic messaging, a framework built by its opposition.

The West Virginia Freedom Caucus and the House Democratic caucus have sharply different visions of government. But this week they both very publicly told West Virginia families that the government should take less of their money at the gas pump. That members in both parties felt compelled to say the same thing, in the same week, about the same issue, is the clearest possible signal of where the center of gravity in West Virginia politics now sits.

Governor Morrisey has not committed to either proposal. A spokesman said the office would “take a close look at any proposal to reduce taxes for everyday West Virginians.” The governor is under no pressure to defend the existing tax level. The only question is whether this is a serious consideration in the mind of the governor because his support would be required.

In West Virginia in 2026, the argument is not whether to cut taxes. Both parties have now gone on the record to accept that. The argument is what kind of cut serves working people better. Democrats have stepped onto that ground deliberately. That tells you much of what you need to know about how complete the realignment is.

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We have a different word for what this is: a mistake.

Let us be clear about what we are watching. A sitting governor, less than 18 months into his first term, has decided that the most productive use of his political capital is to campaign against members of his own party’s legislative majority ahead of the May 12 primary. He is not doing this in one race, but in a series of races. That means he is picking a multi-front internal war against the very caucus he has to work with for the next three years.

We think that is a bad political calculation, and West Virginia Republicans deserve to hear someone say so plainly.

Start With the Math

Morrisey won the 2024 Republican primary for governor with 33 percent of the vote in a six-candidate field. That means two out of every three Republican primary voters in West Virginia chose somebody other than Patrick Morrisey when given the chance. He is the governor. He earned that. But his mandate inside the Republican primary electorate is narrower than his title suggests, and he would be wise to remember it before he starts issuing lists of who is and is not a real Republican.

His approval rating sits in the low-to-mid 50s, which is middling by any measure. Jim Justice, who Morrisey replaced, was consistently among the most popular governors in the country. Morrisey is not Jim Justice. He is a capable attorney and a genuine conservative, but he is not a towering political figure in this state with a reservoir of goodwill to spend. Governors who go to war with their own legislative caucus usually need more of that goodwill than they realize.

Who He Is Targeting

In the 10th District, the incumbent Morrisey wants gone is Sen. Vince Deeds: a retired West Virginia State Police lieutenant colonel with 25 years of service, an FBI National Academy graduate, a pastor, a former law enforcement investigator, and the man who flipped a Democratic Senate seat in 2022 by nearly 20 points. Deeds chairs the interim Children and Families Committee and serves on Health and Human Resources, Judiciary, Education, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Military committees.

The governor’s endorsement statement calls Deeds, by implication, a RINO who opposes conservative, pro-Trump policies. It cites no vote. It cites no bill. It cites no position. It offers no factual basis for the characterization whatsoever. It simply lifts up the challenger in glowing terms and lets the comparison do the dirty work.

If the governor has a specific grievance with Vince Deeds’s record, he owes the voters of the 10th District the respect of saying what it is. Calling a retired state trooper who pastors a church and flipped a Democratic Senate seat a RINO without clear evidence is not a conservative argument, but a political operation looking for a justification.

The Structural Problem

Here is what tends to happen when governors take this approach: they win some races, they lose some races, and they permanently poison the relationships with the legislators who survive. Every incumbent who beats a Morrisey-backed challenger will have beaten the governor’s candidate. That incumbent then owes the governor nothing and has every incentive to prove it. The governor ends up with a caucus that is either beholden to him or hostile to him, with very little in between.

And the ones he beats? If a Comer or another Morrisey-backed challenger wins a seat and then does not perform as advertised, the governor owns that outcome. He cannot distance himself from candidates he personally endorsed in a press release or X post. If they stumble, he stumbles with them.

There is also the matter of the Senate leadership dynamics this cycle. Senate President Randy Smith is already navigating a complicated intra-caucus battle. Multiple sitting senators are under pressure from multiple directions, including from PAC activity that has been linked, through financial and organizational ties, to Morrisey’s orbit. The governor inserting himself directly into Senate primaries on top of that existing pressure does not simplify the caucus situation. It escalates it. And escalation in an election year, when the goal should be holding Republicans together, is the wrong play.

What This Is Really About

Morrisey’s statement frames this as ideological. He says he wants legislators who will advance his agenda on taxes, energy, and economic development. That is a legitimate governor’s interest. We have no quarrel with a governor who wants a Legislature that will work with him.

But there is a difference between building relationships with legislators and declaring political war on the ones who do not move the way one insists. One of those approaches might actually produce results. The other produces resentment, retaliation, and a Legislature that has a very strong institutional memory about which governor tried to take out their colleagues.

The WV WASP has covered this intra-party warfare since before it had a name. We have watched the factions build, the candidate recruitment operations launch, and the PAC money move. What we have not seen is any evidence that the governor’s approach is disciplined enough, or his political standing strong enough, to actually succeed at remaking the Senate in a single primary cycle. What we have seen is a pattern of escalation that may feel satisfying in the short term and prove costly in the long term.

The Bottom Line

Patrick Morrisey has every legal and political right to endorse in a primary. Governors do it. It is not unprecedented. But doing it well requires standing, relationships, and a target that the voters can actually understand is worth replacing. None of those conditions are clearly present here.

Vince Deeds is not a RINO. He is a credentialed conservative who flipped a seat, serves his district, and has not been given a specific reason to answer for. Jonathan Comer may well be a fine man and a capable candidate. But the case for him is not the case against Deeds, and the governor has not made the case against Deeds.

We expect a series of endorsements is coming. We hope the governor will make better arguments when they arrive. And we hope Republican primary voters in the affected districts will look at who their current senators actually are before accepting the RINO label from an executive who himself won his own primary with just one-third of the Republican vote.

There is a word for someone who calls two-thirds of his own party’s primary electorate wrong. It is not a word that tends to age well.

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WVGOP Chairman Josh Holstein framed the numbers as confirmation of a continuing realignment.

“These numbers confirm what we’ve been seeing on the ground for years,” Holstein said. “West Virginia is solidly Republican, and that trend is only accelerating.”

Click here to read the full statement by Chairman Holstein.

West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Pushkin pushed back, arguing the headline obscures a more complicated trajectory.

“What Josh Holstein isn’t telling you is that the Republican surge he’s bragging about has slowed to a trickle,” Pushkin said. “In 2024, Republicans added more than 33,000 new registrations. In 2025, under his leadership, that number dropped to just 4,763. That’s not momentum. That’s a slowdown.”

Pushkin’s numbers hold up. According to Secretary of State data, Republicans added approximately 33,300 net registrations over the course of 2024, compared to roughly 4,700 in 2025. The slowdown in Republican growth is real and significant.

But the data reveals something Pushkin did not address: while Republican growth slowed sharply in 2025, Democratic losses actually accelerated. Democrats shed approximately 11,760 net registrations in 2024. In 2025, that figure jumped to more than 20,000. The party is bleeding voters at nearly twice the rate it was during the last election cycle, even as the GOP’s new registration pace has cooled.

In other words, the mountain is still moving. It’s just moving differently than it was two years ago.

The long-term realignment is genuine and well-documented. In January 2024, Republicans held 469,995 registrations to the Democrats’ 365,224, a gap of roughly 105,000. By December 2025, Republicans stood at 508,956 while Democrats had fallen to 332,111, a gap of nearly 177,000. That is a swing of more than 70,000 in two years, driven as much by Democratic collapse as Republican recruitment.

Pushkin also pointed to slipping Trump approval numbers and economic anxiety over rising gas prices and stock market volatility as context for the registration release. He raised the closed primary as well, arguing that by shutting out unaffiliated and independent voters beginning with the May 2026 election, Republicans have locked roughly a third of the electorate out of meaningful participation in the state’s dominant political contest.

That last point lands with more force when examined against the registration data. Proponents of closing the Republican primary argued that unaffiliated and independent voters would respond by formally joining the GOP rather than sit out the election. The data through the end of 2025 does not support that claim. Republican net registration growth dropped from roughly 33,300 in 2024 to fewer than 5,000 in 2025. Meanwhile, the March 2026 report shows unaffiliated registrations statewide declined by only 164 voters. If unaffiliated voters were migrating into the Republican Party in any meaningful numbers, that figure would look very different. The anticipated flood of new Republicans from the unaffiliated ranks never materialized. If anything, the closure of the primary appears to have coincided with the slowdown, not accelerated the growth its advocates predicted.

With Republicans holding supermajority control of state government, the primary, in most races, carries significant weight. Whether closing it represents a principled defense of party integrity or a strategic miscalculation is a debate the party will likely be having for some time.

What the full dataset makes clear is that both parties understandably avoid telling the complete story. Republican registration growth has genuinely slowed. Democratic registration decline has genuinely accelerated. Both trends are happening simultaneously, and together they paint a picture of a state in the middle of a generational political shift that is far from over.

The registration deadline for the May 12 primary is April 21. Voters must be registered Republicans to cast a ballot in the GOP primary. Registration changes can be made at GoVoteWV.com.

Here is the full quote provided by WVDP Chairman Mike Pushkin:

“What Josh Holstein isn’t telling you is that the Republican surge he’s bragging about has slowed to a trickle. In 2024, Republicans added more than 33,000 new registrations. In 2025, under his leadership, that number dropped to just 4,763. That’s not momentum—that’s a slowdown.

”And the timing of this release isn’t accidental. They’re trying to distract from the fact that Donald Trump’s numbers are slipping—even among Republicans—and that the economic reality facing West Virginians today looks very different than it did just a few months ago, before gas prices went above $4 a gallon, and before the stock market dived threatening people’s retirement security.

”West Virginians are paying attention, and they’re not buying the spin. And let’s not forget—by closing their primaries, Republicans have shut out roughly a third of the electorate in this state from participating at all. That’s not strength. That’s exclusion.”

The West Virginia WASP is a West Virginia political news, humor, and commentary outlet. Follow us at wvwasp.com and @wvwasp on X. 🐝

A Tax That Is Already on Life Support

Chris Pritt is running against incumbent Sen. Tom Takubo in the 17th Senatorial District primary, and he is making noise. On social media, Pritt recently posted a pledge that will resonate with virtually every small business owner in West Virginia: “In the WV Senate I’ll fight for small businesses! This includes working to END the business and inventory tax.”

It is a crowd-pleaser. It is also a statement that deserves a harder look than a campaign post typically gets, because West Virginia is simultaneously pursuing one of the largest economic development strategies in the state’s recent history, and the business and inventory tax sits at the center of that strategy in ways most voters do not fully understand.

Before unpacking the data center question, it is worth acknowledging something: Pritt is not alone in wanting this tax gone. The business personal property tax, which covers machinery, equipment, and inventory held by businesses, has been called a “bad tax” by economists across the ideological spectrum for decades. West Virginia voters rejected a constitutional amendment in 2022 that would have empowered the legislature to eliminate it, but the push has never stopped.

In 2025, Senate Joint Resolution 6 took another run at it. This year, SJR 12 was introduced in the 2026 session, again aimed at eliminating the tax on business inventory. The West Virginia Business and Industry Council listed its elimination as a top priority for 2026. The Tax Foundation, a respected national tax policy organization, has described inventory taxes broadly as “highly distortionary” because they force business decisions based on tax avoidance rather than sound economic logic.

So Pritt is swimming in a popular current. The policy intuition behind his pledge is reasonable.

But here is where it gets complicated.

What Data Centers Actually Pay

When West Virginia talks about attracting data centers, it is talking about warehouses full of servers and computer hardware, the physical backbone of cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and virtually every digital service Americans use. These facilities represent billions of dollars in capital investment.

Under current West Virginia law, that investment is taxable. Servers and computer hardware owned by businesses are classified as tangible personal property and subject to the business personal property tax. That is the same tax Pritt wants to eliminate.

There is, however, an important wrinkle. West Virginia’s High Technology Valuation Act already gives data centers a dramatic discount. According to the West Virginia Division of Economic Development’s own fact sheet, tangible personal property including servers used in a high-technology business is valued for property tax purposes at just 5 percent of its original cost. A $100 million server farm is taxed as if it were worth $5 million. That same document also confirms that sales tax has been eliminated on purchases of computers, servers, hardware, building materials, and related property for direct use in a qualified high-technology business.

So the state has already built a generous on-ramp for data centers. They pay something, but far less than a standard manufacturer would.

The question Pritt’s pledge raises is this: if the business and inventory tax disappears entirely, do data centers pay anything on their equipment at all?

West Virginia Has a Stake in the Answer

This is not an abstract policy debate. In late March, Gov. Patrick Morrisey announced that Google has acquired land in Buffalo, Putnam County, to build a data center campus. Putnam County sits in the 8th Senatorial District, not the 17th. But Pritt is running for a seat in the West Virginia Senate, and the pledge he is making is a statewide one. What data centers pay in property taxes, and what counties keep, is a question that lands wherever these facilities are built.

Under the framework established by House Bill 2014, passed in 2025, data centers certified as “high impact” projects already face a heavily state-tilted revenue structure. Under that law, localities receive only 30 percent of property tax revenue generated by certified data center projects, with the remaining 70 percent going to the state. County officials and school districts have objected.

Now layer Pritt’s proposal on top of that. If the business personal property tax were eliminated outright, the remaining revenue stream from the equipment inside those data centers would shrink further, or disappear. The machinery and servers represent the bulk of a data center’s taxable value. The real property, the land and building, would still be taxable under any likely reform. But the equipment inside is the big number.

The Political Tension No One Is Saying Out Loud

Pritt’s pledge is aimed at small businesses, the hardware store owner frustrated by having to report and pay tax on his inventory every year, the manufacturer carrying raw materials through a slow season. That is the sympathetic face of the business and inventory tax debate, and it is a legitimate grievance.

Pritt frames this as a fight for small businesses, and that is a sympathetic case. But a blanket tax elimination does not distinguish between the corner hardware store and a billion-dollar server farm. Both get the same relief. The little guy and Google walk out winners together.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

West Virginia is now actively competing against Virginia, Georgia, and other states to host data centers. Virginia, the largest data center market in the world, has built its competitive position through targeted incentives, not blanket tax elimination. The difference matters because targeted incentives can be structured with accountability, job creation requirements, and investment thresholds. Blanket elimination of a tax class benefits every company with equipment in the state, whether they employ two people or two thousand.

There is also the local funding question, which is not hypothetical. Statewide, roughly one-third of all property tax collections come from the personal property tax on businesses. School districts and county governments depend on it. In prior debates over this issue, counties like Cabell have projected losses in the tens of millions if the tax were eliminated without full state backfill. The legislative proposals to date have included revenue replacement language, but the mechanics of how the state makes counties whole have never been fully resolved.

Pritt has not spelled out his plan for any of that.

A Fair Question for a Primary Debate

None of this means Pritt is wrong to want the business and inventory tax gone. The argument for ending it is real and has serious supporters. What it does mean is that his pledge deserves a follow-up question, specifically in a state potentially hosting a Google data center campus:

If you eliminate the business and inventory tax, what happens to the property tax revenue from data center equipment? And if West Virginia loses that revenue stream, what do counties and schools receive instead?

Tom Takubo, for his part, supported HB 2014 and the existing data center framework. That framework already dramatically reduces what data centers pay locally. Whether Takubo or Pritt would do more for the counties hosting these facilities under their respective approaches is a legitimate argument for voters in the 17th District to weigh, because the senator they elect will cast votes that shape the answer.

The data center boom is arriving in West Virginia whether the 17th District race produces Pritt or Takubo. The question is which candidate has thought hardest about what that actually means for the counties absorbing these projects, not just the companies moving in.

West Virginia has spent a generation watching resources leave the state and the tax base follow. The pitch for data centers is that they represent a new kind of resource economy: high capital investment, durable infrastructure, and a footprint that does not move when commodity prices fall. That pitch only holds if the state and its counties capture something meaningful from it.

A Senate candidate who wants to eliminate the main tax on that equipment should be prepared to explain what replaces it. 🐝

The WASP contacted the Pritt campaign with questions about the fiscal mechanics of the proposal. No response was received.

The West Virginia Division of Economic Development’s technology industry fact sheet, which details the current High Technology Valuation Act and its treatment of data center equipment, is available here: https://westvirginia.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Pub_FactSheet_InfoTech_DEVO_web.pdf



Senator Tom Takubo appears to have caught a case.

At the opening of the 2026 legislative session in January, Takubo was plain-spoken about where his priorities lay. “My goal will be to really focus on economic development affordability,” he told WOWK-TV. “We’ve done a lot of great things in the past, but one of the things that we’re kind of losing focus on is how inflation is outpacing what a lot of our people are bringing home.” He pointed to rising utility rates, grocery costs, and healthcare access as the issues demanding legislative attention.

That message fit neatly with the broader coalition Takubo had been building. The Mountaineer Freedom Alliance, the PAC backing Takubo-aligned Senate candidates, was founded explicitly around the same premise. Its founder, David H. McKinley, was direct about the organization’s philosophy when he launched it in April 2025.

“It’s all about jobs. It’s all about advancing the economy,” McKinley told the Weirton Daily Times. “I have little interest in turning to the more divisive social issues that do nothing to advance our economy.” The West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, which contributed $135,000 to the MFA Action Fund, described the organization as a PAC “aimed at supporting lawmakers who champion policies to improve the economy instead of focusing on social issues.”

The MFA published op-eds statewide calling for legislators who could lead West Virginia “without being distracted by partisan politics.” MetroNews confirmed last week that many of the Senate candidates aligned with Takubo “are backed by” the MFA, which “focuses on an economic growth message.”

The message was disciplined, consistent, and repeated across months of candidate recruitment. Whatever one thinks of its merits, it was a clear and coherent pitch: the Senate under Randy Smith’s leadership had its priorities wrong, and the Takubo faction represented a corrective.

So it raised eyebrows when, with the May 12 primary closing in and a serious challenge from former delegate Chris Pritt bearing down on him, Takubo hit the airwaves in his Kanawha County district touting his record on abortion, transgender issues, and Second Amendment rights.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with running on those issues. West Virginia is a deeply conservative state, and voters care deeply about them. Nobody here is suggesting those concerns are illegitimate or that candidates should avoid them. The WASP is not in the business of telling Republicans what to run on.

But the contrast is worth noting. Not as an indictment of Takubo personally, but as an observation about the gap between a campaign’s pre-primary positioning and its primary-season messaging. The senator who built his recruitment pitch around economics and affordability is now asking voters to judge him on the very issues his allied organization explicitly said it had “little interest” in.

Part of the context matters here. A PAC connected to Senate President Randy Smith attacked Takubo over his 2021 vote against the Save Women’s Sports Act. Takubo’s explanation for that vote has always been defensible on procedural grounds: he supported keeping biological males out of girls’ sports, but objected to extending the bill into college athletics, which he believed fell under NCAA jurisdiction and created unnecessary legal exposure for the state’s law. That was a reasonable position.

The problem is that reasonable procedural distinctions are difficult to compress into a 30-second radio spot. So rather than relitigating the nuance of a five-year-old committee vote, Takubo’s campaign appears to have concluded that the better move is to simply outrun the attack by embracing the terrain wholesale.

That is a rational campaign decision. Campaigns respond to pressure. Candidates adjust their messaging. None of this is unusual in primary politics, and none of it requires imputing bad faith to Takubo about where he actually stands on these issues.

What it does reveal is something broader about the limits of the “economic conservative” messaging strategy in a Republican primary. The base is not indifferent to social issues; they are central to how many voters understand their own political identity. A candidate who builds a coalition around governance and growth can absolutely win, but he still has to answer the litmus test questions when the primary heats up.

Takubo may well win his primary. He has the name recognition, the institutional relationships, and a legitimate record on fiscal matters. But the radio campaign serves as a reminder that in West Virginia Republican primaries, no candidate gets to define the conversation entirely on his own terms, no matter how disciplined the pre-campaign messaging was.

West Virginia voters are good at spotting a weather vane. Whether they read this one as a sincere restatement of convictions or a tactical adjustment to electoral pressure is a judgment they will make for themselves.

That is, after all, the purpose of a primary.

Sources: WOWK-TV (January 2026); Weirton Daily Times (April 2025); WV Chamber of Commerce (January 2026); WV MetroNews (March 24, 2026)

The WV WASP covers West Virginia politics, government, and the occasional absurdity thereof. Subscribe at wvwasp.com. 🐝

If you are waiting for the WV WASP to join the pile-on, keep waiting.

Not because the optics are fine. They are not fine. Not because Roger Hanshaw’s critics are wrong to be uncomfortable. Some of their discomfort is legitimate. But the coverage of this story has been so focused on one man that it has completely missed the underlying problem.

Let’s start with the argument being made against Hanshaw, because it deserves a fair hearing before it gets dismantled.

The claim, essentially, is this: Hanshaw built the legal architecture protecting the data center industry, and he is now cashing in by representing that same industry in court. He used his position to benefit his future clients. He has a conflict of interest.

Here is the problem with that argument. It proves too much.

West Virginia has a citizen legislature. That means we ask doctors, teachers, lawyers, coal miners, farmers, and businesspeople to leave their professions for 60 days a year, go to Charleston, vote on laws that govern the state, and then go home. They do not stop being doctors, teachers, lawyers, miners, farmers, or businesspeople when they walk out of the Capitol. They go back to their lives. They go back to their clients.

So when we say that a lawyer-legislator should not be able to represent clients in an industry affected by legislation he voted on, we are saying something with consequences we are not prepared to apply consistently. Should the physician-delegate who voted on the hospital licensing bill be barred from practicing at a hospital regulated by that bill? Should the teacher-delegate who championed the education funding formula be prohibited from working in the school system that benefits from it? Should the coal operator who sits in the House and votes on mining regulations face an ethics complaint every time he runs a mining operation?

Nobody is making those arguments. The outrage being directed at Hanshaw rests on a standard that applies to him alone because he is visible, powerful, and easy to dislike. That is not a principle. It is merely a grievance.

Now, there is a harder version of the Hanshaw criticism that deserves more serious treatment. The Mason County case stands apart from Tucker County in one important way. Hanshaw filed his notice of appearance in the Mason County appeal on February 12 of this year. One week later, with that representation already active, the House passed the data center rules bundle. He voted on legislation directly relevant to data center development while already on retainer for a data center developer. He did not request a Rule 49 ruling, which is the House’s own process for a member to disclose a potential conflict before voting.

That is the sharper edge of this story and it deserves some scrutiny. But even there, Rule 49 would have almost certainly allowed him to vote anyway. Under the House’s own rules, a member is directed to vote if the presiding officer determines the member is affected only as part of a class of five or more similarly situated entities. Under the rules the legislature wrote for itself, Hanshaw was in the clear. The Speaker, it bears noting, is the presiding officer who rules on Rule 49 requests from other members. He is, in effect, his own referee.

Which brings us to what this story is actually about.

The real problem hiding inside the Hanshaw coverage is not his client list. It is the set of rules West Virginia has written to make these situations not just possible but legal, comfortable, and essentially unreviewable.

Start with financial disclosure. Under West Virginia law, W. Va. Code 6B-2-7, public officials including legislators must disclose their employer and identify income sources by category. But the statute explicitly carves attorneys out from disclosing their individual clients. Hanshaw listed Bowles Rice on his disclosure form. He was legally required to list nothing more. The public, the press, and fellow legislators had no way of knowing from any official document that he was representing Fundamental Data or any other data center interest. That information came out through court filings, not through any disclosure system designed to surface it.

That is a loophole in the disclosure law large enough to steer a data center through.

Then there is the 60-day election blackout. W. Va. Code 6B-2-3a(c)(1) prohibits the Ethics Commission from accepting complaints against a candidate during the 60 days before an election. West Virginia’s primary is May 13. The blackout started March 13. The Tucker County filing was March 16. By the time Country Roads News broke the story, the window for a formal complaint on the Tucker County case had already closed. Anyone wanting accountability through the Ethics Commission is now waiting until after the primary, at minimum, and the five-year statute of limitations means this will not age off the books. But the immediate electoral accountability the system is supposed to provide has been neutralized by the calendar.

Here is what the WV WASP believes should change, and we believe it should apply to every legislator regardless of party, industry, or visibility.

Lawyers serving in the legislature should be required to disclose, by category, the industries in which their active clients operate, without naming the clients themselves. The attorney-client privilege protects individual client identities. It does not and should not protect the public from knowing that their Speaker is generating income from the data center sector while crafting data center law. A simple industry-category disclosure resolves both concerns.

The class-of-five loophole in Rule 49 needs examination. When a legislator has an active, paid client relationship in an industry, voting on legislation that directly benefits that industry is a different thing than a doctor voting on general healthcare funding. One is professional adjacency. The other is active financial entanglement. The House should consider a rule requiring disclosure and abstention when an active client relationship exists in the specific industry under consideration, regardless of the number of entities affected.

And the 60-day election blackout, while designed to protect candidates from politically motivated complaints, functions as a shield against legitimate accountability during the one period when voters could actually act on information. The legislature should examine whether that window needs narrowing, or whether an expedited review process for complaints filed in the 90-day period before the blackout could serve both interests.

Roger Hanshaw played by the rules. But the rules are the problem. This story belongs to every lawmaker in West Virginia, not just the ones who are currently convenient to attack.

The WV WASP is a political news, humor, and commentary outlet. Visit is at Wvwasp.com and follow us on X @wvwasp 🐝

Judge Carrie Webster signed the order on Thursday afternoon, March 26, directing Secretary of State Kris Warner to withdraw his certification of Sawyer Dennison as a candidate for House District 78. Election officials across the state were ordered to disregard any votes cast for Dennison, whether on Election Day or by absentee ballot.

The case, filed March 16 by petitioner John Sedoski, a Monongalia County Republican Executive Committee member and District 78 voter, turned not on complicated legal arguments but on a lease. Dennison’s own attorneys submitted an apartment lease agreement showing their client has lived at 2001 Brunswick Court in Morgantown since November 3, 2025, an address squarely within House District 78. That much, at least, was not in dispute.

What made Thursday’s filing unusual was what came next. Rather than fight the petition, Dennison’s counsel at Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP filed a response asking the court to rule against their own client. Attorney Joshua Stephan wrote that Dennison had “elected not to challenge or otherwise contest the Petition” and requested the writ be granted, while carefully preserving a hedge that Dennison was “not conceding any of the factual allegations” in the original petition.

That lawyerly caveat matters little now. The order is signed, the certification is pulled, and the Monongalia County Clerk has been notified.

The Secretary of State’s office took no position on the underlying facts, a posture the court noted in its order.

A Candidate in Transit

The district switch itself had drawn quiet scrutiny even before the lawsuit landed. Court records show Dennison originally filed pre-candidacy paperwork for District 80 in September, listing a different residential address at 416 Harding Avenue. By December, he had reoriented entirely to District 78, appearing on WAJR’s “Talk of the Town” to announce his candidacy there.

The petition painted a complicated picture of Dennison’s residency timeline. It noted that until at least November 12, 2025, Dennison remained registered to vote in Raleigh County and cast his ballot there in the 2024 general election. He filed his pre-candidacy forms for District 80 while not even registered to vote in that district.

The WAJR interview also surfaced a biographical detail worth noting: Dennison interned on Capitol Hill with Patrick Morrisey while the governor was serving as Attorney General, and later worked full-time for U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. The résumé places him squarely inside the orbit of national conservative infrastructure, a background that shaped his campaign platform around income tax elimination and federal spending restraint.

Whether those connections played any role in the late district switch is unknown. No one from Dennison’s campaign responded to a request for comment Thursday.

Two Men Left Standing

Dennison’s exit reshapes what had been a three-way Republican primary. He had been running against incumbent Del. “Geno” Chiarelli and challenger Cohen Terneus, with the May 12 primary now reduced to a head-to-head matchup between the two.

For Chiarelli, a Morgantown-area substance abuse counselor who has also worked in child protective services first elected in 2022, the development removes one variable from what had been shaping up as a contested primary fight. Whether Dennison’s supporters, if he had built any meaningful base after months of campaigning, break toward Chiarelli or Terneus in the compressed time remaining before Election Day is an open question. What is clear is that a three-way race, which can produce volatile results by splitting votes unpredictably, is now a straightforward two-man contest.

Terneus, a self-described lifelong West Virginian and small business owner making his first run for office, has built his campaign around cutting red tape, lowering taxes, fixing crumbling roads, and keeping political agendas out of schools. For him, the math changes too. Any vote share Dennison might have drawn now has nowhere to go but between the two remaining candidates.

Del. Chiarelli did not provide an official comment for this story.

A Quiet Concession with Open Questions

What remains unanswered publicly is the question at the core of the petition: where, exactly, Dennison was legally domiciled for purposes of running in the district. The West Virginia Constitution requires candidates to have resided in their district for one full year preceding the election. The lease places Dennison in Morgantown no earlier than November 3, 2025, well short of that threshold relative to the May 12 primary.

The court did not need to resolve the factual dispute because Dennison’s own legal team handed the petitioner a win before the fight began.

The episode lands with particular force heading into primary season. A candidate who filed, qualified, and made it onto a ballot was removed less than seven weeks before Election Day, not by a bare-knuckle legal brawl but by a concession from his own attorneys. He arrived in District 78 late, announced loudly, knocked hundreds of doors by his own account, and exits without a single vote counted.

The WASP will continue reporting on the HD-78 race as the Chiarelli-Terneus primary develops.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, humor, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X @wvwasp and at wvwasp.com. 🐝

The races in Part 2 are where the factional war is loudest. But some of the most interesting stories on the 2026 Senate ballot are in the races fewer people are talking about. Primaries where the candidates filed without being recruited. Districts where a party switch raises questions. Specials where an appointee has to defend a seat they were handed. And a few races where the outcome may already be decided before a single vote is cast.

Here is the rest of the board.

The Sleepers

District 4: The Primary Nobody Asked For

Cabell, Jackson, Mason, Putnam Counties Republican primary: Sen. Eric Tarr (i) vs. Phillip Surface vs. Travis Willard Democratic primary: Zachary Abbott

Eric Tarr is one of the most interesting figures in this entire cycle. As detailed in Part 1, he is the former Senate Finance chair who publicly said the Republican Senate caucus had no consensus on a public policy agenda heading into the 2026 session. He has criticized both the Takubo recruitment effort and the populist wing he loosely aligns with. He is, by most accounts, frustrated with everyone.

But Tarr is no career politician coasting on a title. He has a remarkable personal story which can easily be found on his public social media. He won his Senate seat in 2018 by defeating appointed incumbent Mark Drennan in the Republican primary with 51.8 percent of the vote and ran unopposed in 2022.

And now he has two primary challengers of his own.

The remarkable thing about the District 4 primary is that nobody recruited these candidates. A source close to the challenger recruitment operation told the WASP flatly: “No one recruited those guys to run against Tarr…they decided to run on their own.”

Phillip Surface is running on a platform that reads like a point-by-point echo of the critiques leveled at the Senate throughout this series. In a statement to the WASP, Surface said: “I am running for State Senate in District 4 because West Virginia needs serious, results-driven leadership on jobs, infrastructure, affordability, education, and healthcare. The Senate, for too long, has focused on issues that do not address the main issues facing our people.” He backs targeted tax and regulatory reforms, workforce training, broadband expansion, rural hospital support, and long-term infrastructure investment. Whether or not Surface was formally recruited, he is clearly running the same playbook.

Willard’s campaign website strikes a similar chord, emphasizing “putting people above politics” and pledging to focus on jobs, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. He has reportedly told people he plans to spend $250,000 on the race, though a source close to the recruitment effort expressed deep skepticism about where that money would come from.

This is Trump country. The district went for Trump by a wide margin in 2024 and includes Putnam County’s fast-growing Teays Valley corridor. Tarr’s brand of fiscal conservatism and his willingness to publicly criticize his own caucus may cut both ways with primary voters. But the challengers have failed to distinguish themselves from the incumbent.

Bottom line: Tarr probably survives, but the fact that he drew two unsolicited challengers tells you something about the mood inside the southern Putnam County portion of district 4.

District 11: The Zombie Candidacy

Barbour, Braxton, Pendleton, Pocahontas, Randolph, Upshur, Webster Counties Republican primary: Sen. William “Bill” Hamilton (i) vs. Robert Karnes vs. Jack Reger

Robert Karnes keeps coming back.

Karnes first won this seat in 2014, part of the historic wave that gave Republicans control of the Legislature for the first time in over 80 years. He lost it to Hamilton in the 2018 primary. He won the other District 11 Senate seat in 2020 by defeating the incumbent in the Republican primary. Then he lost that seat to Robbie Morris in the 2024 primary. Now he is running for his old seat again, against the man who beat him six years ago.

That alone would make this race notable. But Karnes carries considerable baggage. His tenure in the Senate was marked by controversial public statements. He sparked headlines with remarks questioning marital immunity in sexual assault cases, and in October 2024, he posted a comment on social media about then-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris that was widely condemned as sexist and vulgar. Questions about his residency have also followed him through multiple campaigns. Karnes could be described as so far right that he lands outside the ideological arena where most district 11 voters likely reside.

Hamilton, by contrast, is a moderate Republican with labor union sympathies. He is a Buckhannon native who has been in the Legislature since 2002, first in the House and then in the Senate after beating Karnes in 2018. He is a retired insurance agent. He ran unopposed in 2022 and announced two years ago during a candidate forum that he would not seek reelection. He apparently changed his mind, filing on the first day of the candidate filing period. In his announcement, Hamilton said his focus remains on “creating good jobs, affordable healthcare, improving infrastructure, supporting education, revitalizing our state parks and tourism, and finishing broadband expansion.”

Reger is the third candidate in the race and is less well known. Some sources have told us Reger could serve as a spoiler to the higher profile Karnes challenge, therefore handing the race to the incumbent Hamilton. Reger is a retired career educator and Buckhannon city councilman who spent 38 years in public schools. His campaign is built around a crisis that is personal to this district: three of District 11’s seven counties are facing school closures and consolidations. Reger has called it a failure of legislative leadership and argues that when communities lose their schools, they lose everything that holds them together. It is a localized pitch in a district where that issue lands differently than abstract debates about tort reform or culture wars.

This is the largest Senate district in the state at over 4,400 square miles, covering seven counties in the rural heart of West Virginia. Hamilton has the incumbency advantage and chairs the natural resources committee, but in a three-way race in a district this vast, turnout patterns can produce surprises.

Bottom line: Reger is clearly focused mostly on public education. Will that resonate? Karnes has won and lost so many races in this district that he is practically a permanent fixture. Whether voters find his persistence admirable or exhausting will determine whether Hamilton holds on.

District 12: The Quiet Challenge

Calhoun, Gilmer, Harrison, Lewis, Taylor Counties Republican primary: Sen. Ben Queen (i) vs. Joseph Earley

Queen flipped this seat in 2022, winning the general election with 68.7 percent of the vote. He is the Senate Majority Whip and a member of the leadership team, which makes him a target by association even if he is not personally part of the factional warfare.

Earley ran for Congress in West Virginia’s 2nd District in 2024. He brings some name recognition from that race but is not well known across the Senate district. Without a major recruitment operation behind him, Earley faces an uphill climb against an incumbent who won convincingly last time and holds a leadership title.

Bottom line: Queen is the favorite and is well-liked in the district, but the fact that someone filed tells you even leadership-aligned incumbents are not getting free passes this cycle.

District 16: The Eastern Panhandle Hold

Berkeley, Jefferson Counties Republican primary: Sen. Jason Barrett (i) vs. Chantele Mack

Barrett is a former Democrat who served in the House of Delegates from the 61st District. He won reelection as a Democrat in November 2020, then switched his party registration to Republican weeks later, drawing sharp criticism from Democratic leaders who called it “self-serving opportunism.” He ran for the Senate as a Republican in 2022 and won with 60.5 percent. He is identified by sources as part of the Tarr sub-faction within the caucus. No Democrat filed for this seat, making the Republican primary tantamount to election.

Mack is not well known, and Barrett’s 2022 margin suggests he has a solid base in the district. But the Eastern Panhandle is one of the fastest-growing parts of the state, and its electorate is harder to predict than the rural districts that dominate the rest of the map.

Bottom line: Barrett should hold, but the lack of a Democratic challenger means the primary is the only game in town.

District 17: The Recruiter Gets Recruited Against

Kanawha County Republican primary: Sen. Tom Takubo (i) vs. Chris Pritt

This is the race with the richest irony on the entire ballot.

Takubo has spent the better part of a year recruiting challengers to run against sitting senators across the state. Now he has a challenger of his own.

Chris Pritt is a former delegate who served two terms in the House (2020-2024). He is an attorney who co-founded Pritt & Pritt, PLLC with his wife Kelly in Charleston. Pritt ran for the District 17 Senate seat in 2024 but lost the Republican primary to Eric Nelson. When Governor Morrisey tapped Nelson to be Secretary of Revenue, the seat opened back up. Pritt chose to challenge Takubo rather than run for the special election against appointee Anne Charnock.

Pritt’s Facebook page says he represents “the Republican wing of the Republican Party,” a phrase that tells you exactly where he is positioning himself. He is a very close ally and confidant of Governor Patrick Morrisey. Pritt sees Takubo as insufficiently conservative. Takubo, a pulmonary and critical care physician who co-founded Pulmonary Associates of Charleston, sees himself as a pragmatic problem-solver who has been in the Senate since 2014 and served as majority leader from 2018 to 2025.

Takubo would be hard to beat in Kanawha County, where he has deep roots and a professional reputation that extends well beyond politics. But the fact that the man orchestrating the largest primary challenge operation in recent WV GOP history is himself facing a primary adds a layer of vulnerability to the entire effort. If Takubo loses his own seat while his recruits win theirs, the irony would be almost too perfect.

Bottom line: Takubo is the heavy favorite, but Pritt is not a nobody. He has run before, he has a base, and he will make Takubo spend time and money defending home turf instead of helping his recruits.

The Party Switchers

District 6: The Four-Way With Baggage

McDowell, Mercer, Mingo, Wayne Counties Republican primary: Sen. Mark Maynard (i) vs. Jeff Disibbio vs. Eric Porterfield vs. Edwin Ray Vanover Democratic primary: Joshua Hamby vs. Wyatt Lilly

This is the wildest primary field on the ballot, and it is not close.

Start with Disibbio. He is the president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of the Two Virginias, a Bluefield University criminal justice instructor, and a former bank trust officer. He holds a law degree from Regent University and bachelor’s degrees from Radford University and Bluefield College. He sits on a long list of local boards: the Mercer County Planning Commission, the Tourism Board, the Building Commission, the Solid Waste Authority, and the Craft Memorial Library Board, among others. His resume is serious.

But here is the wrinkle: Disibbio ran in this district in 2024 as a Democrat. He lost to Craig Hart in the general election after a messy situation in which he was accidentally left off the ballot in Mingo County during part of early voting, prompting an ACLU legal challenge. Now he is running as a Republican. Party switches are common in West Virginia. Running for the same seat you just lost, in the other party’s primary, one cycle later, is less common. Disibbio has positioned himself as part of the statewide pro-jobs recruitment slate, telling WVVA that the group of candidates he’s running with is “not worried about titles or who gets the credit, it’s simply about advancing West Virginia.”

Then there is Porterfield. Eric Porterfield served one term in the House of Delegates (2018-2020) before being voted out in his own Republican primary, finishing last among the candidates. During his single term, Porterfield made national news for making all sorts of off-color comments during his time in public office. The West Virginia Republican Party officially denounced his comments. He ran for this Senate seat in 2024 and lost again. Now he is back for a third try.

Vanover, from Bluefield, is the least known of the four candidates.

Maynard has held this seat since 2014 and won reelection in 2022 with 73.4 percent of the general election vote. He is a Marshall University graduate and a fixture in southern West Virginia politics. But a four-way primary in a district that covers the state’s southwestern corner, from the coalfields of McDowell and Mingo to the small cities of Mercer County, is inherently unpredictable. If the vote splinters, margins get thin. Trump carried this district with over 80 percent in 2024, making it one of the reddest Senate districts in the state.

Bottom line: Maynard is the favorite by a wide margin, but this field guarantees the race will be covered. Disibbio’s resume and Chamber connections make him the most credible challenger. Porterfield’s presence ensures the race gets attention just because, well, you get our point.

District 13: The General Election Preview

Marion, Monongalia Counties Republican primary: Sen. Mike Oliverio (i) (unopposed) Democratic primary: Del. John Williams

This is not a primary story. It is a general election story hiding in a primary wrapper.

Oliverio is one of the more unusual figures in West Virginia politics. He was first elected to the Senate in 1994 as a Democrat, served multiple terms, ran for Congress in 2010 as a Democrat challenging Alan Mollohan, but lost in the general to David Mckinley. He then returned to the Senate in 2022 as a Republican, defeating longtime Democratic delegate Barbara Fleischauer with 50.3 percent of the vote.

Williams is a sitting Democratic delegate from Morgantown who has served since 2016. This will set up a match of the ideological divide that defines the 13th District: Morgantown’s college-town progressivism versus the more conservative voters in the rest of the district.

Trump carried the district with just 51.5 percent in 2024, making it the most competitive Senate district in the state by presidential vote share. A Republican source told the WASP he has heard “a lot of people talking about” this race being competitive.

Bottom line: Oliverio held on by a thread in 2022. Williams will test whether that thread holds.

The Specials

District 3 Special: The Boley Succession

Pleasants, Ritchie, Wood, Wirt Counties Republican primary: Sen. Trenton Barnhart (i) vs. Jason S. Harshbarger

Barnhart was appointed by Governor Morrisey to fill the seat vacated by longtime Sen. Donna Boley. He was serving in the House of Delegates at the time of his Senate appointment. Barnhart is young, works hard, and keeps his head down, even if he is socially awkward. No Democrat filed, making this primary tantamount to election.

Harshbarger is not well known, and Barnhart has the advantage of incumbency and strong previous campaign infrastructure.

Bottom line: Barnhart should hold, but an appointee is never as safe as an elected incumbent.

District 17 Special: The Other Kanawha Race

Kanawha County Republican primary: Sen. Anne Charnock (i) vs. Michael Jarrouj Democratic primary: Ted Boettner vs. Richie Robb

Charnock was appointed by Morrisey to replace Eric Nelson after Nelson was tapped as Secretary of Revenue. She is a former Charleston municipal court judge. Jarrouj is a restaurant owner who has created dozens of jobs, fitting the profile of the pro-jobs candidates the recruitment operation has been promoting across the state.

This race was originally seen as the more vulnerable of the two District 17 contests. One observer noted that “Charnock could be vulnerable being an appointed state senator.” Pritt chose to challenge Takubo instead of Charnock, which may have given Charnock a break. Jarrouj will need to make the case that his private-sector experience matters more than Charnock’s judicial background.

The Democratic primary is also worth watching. Boettner is a policy analyst, and Robb is a former mayor of South Charleston.. Whoever wins will take on the Republican primary winner in a Kanawha County general election that could be competitive.

Bottom line: This is the kind of race where the appointee has a title but the challenger has a story to tell.

The Open Seat

District 5: The Huntington Showdown

Cabell, Wayne Counties Republican primary: Chris Miller (unopposed) Democratic primary: DuRon Jackson vs. Josh Keck vs. Paul Ross

This is an open seat created by the retirement of Sen. Mike Woelfel, the Democratic minority leader. It is one of the few districts where Democrats believe they have a real chance, and the three-way Democratic primary reflects that optimism.

Miller is the president of Dutch Miller Automotive and the son of U.S. Rep. Carol Miller. He ran in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2024 and lost to Morrisey, but he built name recognition and a donor base in the process. He is unopposed in the Republican primary, which gives him a significant advantage: while Democrats sort out their nominee, Miller can focus entirely on the general election.

A Republican source told the WASP that Democrats “are gonna make them work down there” but that Miller “works his tail off” and will get the job done.

Trump carried this district with 61.3 percent in 2024, but Woelfel won reelection as a Democrat in 2022 with 54 percent, proving the district will cross party lines for the right candidate. The Democratic nominee will need to replicate that crossover appeal.

Bottom line: Miller is the favorite, but this is the district where Democrats have the best math to steal a Senate seat.

The Race That Is Already Over

District 10: Deeds Cruises

Fayette, Greenbrier, Monroe, Nicholas, Summers Counties Republican primary: Sen. Vince Deeds (i) vs. Jonathan Comer No Democrat filed.

This one is not close, and the reasons why are instructive.

Deeds is popular in his district. He won big in 2022 despite facing a well-funded primary opponent. No Democrat bothered to file against him, which tells you something about how the other party views his strength.

This race originally had three Republican candidates, but Robert Shirley Love from Fayette County, was removed from the ballot after Deeds himself filed an emergency petition in Kanawha County Circuit Court. The lawsuit alleged that Love did not meet the state Constitution’s five-year residency requirement, citing Georgia voter records showing Love voted there in December 2022 and social media posts suggesting he and his wife did not move to West Virginia until late 2023 or early 2024. Love suspended his campaign. If that story sounds familiar, it should: residency challenges have become a recurring theme in West Virginia Senate races, as Part 1 of this series detailed with the 2022 Kiessling case.

That leaves Comer, a Lewisburg pastor, as the sole challenger. Sources tell the WASP that Comer was directly recruited into the race by Governor Morrisey and First Lady Denise Morrisey. The Morriseys have clashed with Deeds because he does not support their agenda 100 percent of the time. But the recruitment effort appears to have been thrown together at the last minute. With less than two months until the primary, Comer has no ads running and held his first fundraiser on March 19. Outside of Greenbrier County, he has virtually no name recognition. Multiple sources familiar with the district say Comer also carries personal baggage that locals are well aware of and that could surface during the campaign.

This is the race that Part 1 referenced when we noted that “in at least one other race, sources tell the WASP that the Morrisey camp recruited a challenger on behalf of the incumbent faction. That effort has not gone well.”

Bottom line: Deeds wins easily. The Morrisey camp recruited a challenger with little funding, no ads, no name recognition outside one county, and local baggage. This is what happens when the recruitment effort runs in the wrong direction.

What the Full Board Tells Us

Across three parts of this series, we have now covered all 19 seats on the May 12 ballot. The picture that emerges is not simple. It is not a clean story of reformers versus the establishment, or moderates versus conservatives, or insiders versus outsiders.

It is a story about a political party that achieved total dominance and then spends too much of its time fighting internally. A party where a quarter of the Senate is being challenged not by Democrats but by other Republicans who think the incumbents have failed. A party where the recruitment operation’s own architect publicly apologized for the last batch of candidates he helped elect. A party where the governor is backing incumbents who, in one case, has an agenda that conflicts with his own. A party where a former senator who has lost twice is running for a third time, where a former Democrat is running as a Republican for a seat he just lost as a Democrat, and where a delegate whose comments during his single term drew a formal denunciation from the West Virginia Republican Party.

West Virginia’s Republican Party is in no danger whatsoever of losing power. It is in danger of not knowing what to do with it.

May 12 will not resolve that question. But it will tell us who gets to try to answer it next.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, humor, and commentary outlet. Follow us on X @wvwasp and at wvwasp.com.

There is a ritual of democracy that West Virginians will perform on November 3, 2026. They will drive to their polling places, sign the rolls, take a ballot, and choose their representatives. The process will look, as it always has, like an election.

But the real elections in West Virginia, the ones that will determine who sits in Charleston for the next two years, will happen six months earlier, on May 12, in a Republican primary that a large share of West Virginians are not permitted to enter.

Whether that is a problem or a feature depends entirely on how you answer a question the West Virginia Republican Party has now answered twice: who should choose a party’s nominees?

How We Got Here

West Virginia’s transformation from Democratic stronghold to Republican supermajority is one of the more dramatic party flips in modern American state politics. As recently as 2014, Democrats held the governor’s office and both chambers of the legislature. By 2024, Republicans had not only flipped every statewide constitutional office but had built margins in the House and Senate that made the Democratic caucus functionally ornamental.

In that environment, the question of who controlled the Republican nomination process was never merely procedural. It was the question of governance itself.

Unaffiliated voters had been able to participate in Republican primary contests for decades. During that time, the party kept its tent wide. Independent voters, many of them conservative, many of them Trump voters, came and went freely. Then came the supermajority, and with it a new calculation.

The question came to a head on January 27, 2024, at the West Virginia Republican State Executive Committee’s winter meeting, held at the Four Points by Sheraton in Charleston. The committee took up Resolution No. 8, offered by Mason County Delegate Jim Butler: a proposal to limit participation in Republican primary elections to registered Republican voters.

It was not a simple vote. A minority faction within the Resolutions Committee had submitted a report proposing to amend the resolution, pushing the effective date from 2024 to 2026, buying time and softening the blow. That fight went to a secret ballot, and the amendment passed 62 to 58. Then came the final vote on the resolution as amended: closing the Republican primary to everyone but registered Republicans, beginning with the 2026 election cycle.

That vote was also taken by secret ballot. The resolution passed 65 to 54.

The tally was close. Eleven votes separated the winning side from the losing one, but it was enough. West Virginia Republicans had set an alarm for 2026 and gone back to sleep.

The Case for the Door

To understand why 65 members of the State Executive Committee voted to close the primary, it helps to set aside the optics and take the argument seriously on its own terms. Because the argument is not frivolous.

A political party is, at its core, a private membership organization. Its central function is to nominate candidates who reflect the values and priorities of its members. That mission is undermined, the argument goes, when people who declined to join the party are handed influence over who its nominees will be. Republicans built their majority in West Virginia through years of organizing, candidate recruitment, and persuasion. Why should the fruits of that work be shared with people who chose not to be part of it?

Sen. Jay Taylor, one of the resolution’s most direct defenders, stated the logic plainly in debate. When Republicans were in the minority, he noted, Democrats had an incentive to cross over and influence GOP primaries toward more moderate nominees. Now that the situation is reversed, closing the primary protects the majority coalition from the same tactic. With President Trump publicly supporting closed primaries nationally, the position also carries the endorsement of the party’s current dominant figure.

There is also the matter of legitimate associational rights. West Virginia state code explicitly grants political parties the authority to set their own participation standards. The Republican Party of West Virginia is exercising a legal right that the legislature specifically preserved. The decision was made not by a single leader but by a roughly 120-member governing body in two separate votes, both by secret ballot, giving every member the freedom to vote their conscience without political exposure.

And critically, the door has not been locked from the outside. It has simply required a key. West Virginia’s voter registration deadline falls 21 days before the primary, which means any independent voter who wants a voice in Republican nominations has a straightforward path to get one: register. Party leadership has committed to an active outreach campaign, including door hangers, digital advertising, and radio, specifically targeting conservative independents to encourage them to make that switch. The argument is not that independents are unwelcome. It is that membership in the party should come before a vote in its internal elections.

Taken together, these are not thin arguments. They reflect a coherent philosophy about what a political party is and what it owes to people outside its ranks.

The Attempt to Reverse It

Two years passed. The alarm went off. And a faction within the party decided to try to stop the effort to close the primary.

When the State Executive Committee convened again on January 10, 2026, again at the Four Points by Sheraton, the effort to reopen the primary arrived through multiple channels simultaneously and was blocked through each of them in turn.

First, the Resolutions Committee. Two resolutions calling to reopen the primary had been submitted and, because of their similarity, were combined into one. That combined resolution failed in committee. A minority group of three members of the Resolutions Committee then filed a petition to force the question to a full floor vote. Under party bylaws, a minority report requires signatures from one-third of the committee members, submitted in writing to the State Secretary not less than one hour before the meeting is called to order.

The petition had the signatures. What it did not have, according to a ruling by the chairman, was members from the right congressional district. The three signatories had been appointed to the committee as replacements for members from the 1st Congressional District. The problem: the three of them were from the 2nd Congressional District. The party’s own appointment process had placed them in the wrong seats. The chairman consulted the parliamentarian and acknowledged the appointments had been made in error. The minority report was invalidated on that basis. The primary question never reached the floor through that channel.

It reached the floor anyway, through new business.

Ken Reed, a 2026 state Senate candidate, moved to rescind the 2024 resolution, to undo the closure entirely. He asked that the vote be conducted by secret ballot, the same method used two years earlier when the closure was adopted. The body rejected that request. A subsequent motion for a roll call vote was made and also rejected. Under Roberts Rules of Order, with both alternatives voted down, voice vote was the only remaining option.

Sen. Jay Taylor then moved to postpone the matter indefinitely, a parliamentary maneuver that would immediately end all debate and kill the rescission effort without a recorded vote on the merits. The stakes were clarified for the room: a yes vote meant the primary stayed closed; a no vote meant the debate continued.

Sen. Jack David Woodrum moved for a secret ballot on Taylor’s motion, invoking explicitly, “the interest of party unity.” That request, too, was rejected by the body.

After extensive debate and multiple points of order, the committee voted on Taylor’s motion to postpone indefinitely. The ayes had it. The 2026 Republican primary would remain closed.

The Case Against

The opposition to the closed primary does not come only from Democrats or from people hostile to the Republican Party’s success. Some of the most pointed concerns have come from within the GOP itself, from people who helped build the majority and worry about what closing it off might cost.

Wood County Republican Delegate Scot Heckert was among those who argued publicly against closure. His case was straightforward: the independent voters being shut out were not the enemy. They were the coalition. They voted for Trump. They helped flip West Virginia’s congressional delegation to Republican. They contributed to the supermajorities the party now holds. Treating them as a threat to be managed, rather than an asset to be cultivated, risks the foundation the majority was built on.

The downstream concern is not about any single election. It is structural. The filing season illustrated the point clearly. According to Ballotpedia’s tracking of the 2026 cycle, Republicans filed to run in 94 of 100 House of Delegates districts while Democrats filed in only 86. In multiple State Senate races, no Democrat filed at all, making the Republican primary the only contested election on the ballot. When that is the case across a majority of legislative districts, the practical effect is that a subset of registered Republicans, those who turn out in a low-profile May primary, are making decisions for the entire state.

That is not inherently wrong. Primary voters in both parties have always wielded disproportionate influence. But the combination of a closed primary and several uncontested general elections creates a narrower accountability window than West Virginia has seen before. Legislators in uncontested districts answer, in any meaningful electoral sense, only to primary voters. And now only registered Republicans can be among them.

The question critics raise is not whether Republicans have the right to run their party this way. They clearly do. The question is whether concentrating that much nominating power in a single closed process produces governance that serves the full range of West Virginians, including the hundreds of thousands who vote Republican in November but never joined the party.

What Comes Next

May 12 will be the first real test of what a fully closed Republican nomination process looks like in West Virginia. Multiple State Senate incumbents face serious primary challenges from candidates willing to contest the existing leadership structure. Sources familiar with the internal landscape describe these as among the most consequential intraparty battles the state has seen in years. The outcomes will shape who controls the Senate, who leads it, and what direction state government takes for the next four years.

All of that will be decided before most West Virginians cast a vote.

Proponents argue that is as it should be. Republicans earned the right to choose Republican nominees. The general election remains open to every registered voter, and any independent who wants a voice in the earlier contest can register before the April 21 deadline. The party is actively working to make that case.

Critics argue the structure that has developed, a closed primary in a state where Republicans run largely uncontested or unthreatened in November, has created a system where a shrinking pool of primary voters exercises growing power over public outcomes. They are not wrong about the mechanics, even if they disagree about the remedy.

Both sides are describing the same reality. They simply weigh it differently.

There is one number from the 2024 vote worth carrying forward into whatever judgment a reader reaches. When the State Executive Committee voted to close the primary, the final tally was 65 to 54. Not a landslide. Not a consensus. Sixty-five members voted to lock the door. Fifty-four voted to leave it open.

The body chose to do it by secret ballot. Every member voted their conscience without their name attached to the result.

Two years later, when the question was whether to reverse it, the membership rejected secret ballot and rejected roll call. The matter was settled by voice vote, with no count recorded and no member’s position traceable.

What to make of that asymmetry is, like the closed primary itself, a question that reasonable people in West Virginia are going to answer differently. But it is the right question to be asking.

The WV WASP is a West Virginia political news, humor, and commentary outlet. Reach us at wvwasp.com or @wvwasp on X.

But somewhere in the middle of that debate, something unusual happened. House Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty (D-Ohio) didn’t just argue policy. He argued federal law. Specifically, he told the chamber that the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, known as UOCAVA, required states to count military ballots postmarked by election day regardless of when they were received. He cited 52 USC 20302. He said passing HB 4600 would put West Virginia in direct conflict with federal statute.

“Federal law does not require receipt by election day,” Fluharty declared from the House floor. “It requires the ability to vote by election day specifically for our military. We are contradicting that. This will be challenged probably 10 minutes after it passes and it will not stand.”

It was a bold claim. It was also, according to the actual text of the law, wrong.

Looking It Up

Del. JB Akers (R-Kanawha), who had been yielding time to Fluharty early in the debate, didn’t push back hard on the statutory claim. He acknowledged that if there were a conflict with federal law, federal law would prevail. That’s basic supremacy clause material. But it left Fluharty’s factual premise standing unchallenged in front of a packed chamber.

Del. Tristan Leavitt (R-Kanawha) was listening. Leavitt, who has had training in voting law, had no recollection of UOCAVA working the way Fluharty described. So while other members were speaking, he pulled up the statute on his own.

What Leavitt found was straightforward: UOCAVA’s core requirements focus on states sending ballots to military and overseas voters at least 45 days before federal elections, ensuring those voters have time to receive, complete, and return their ballots. The law requires states to provide electronic transmission options and to send validly requested absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters no later than 45 days before a federal election. Nothing in the statute, as written, mandates that states count ballots received after election day.

When the time came, Leavitt asked Fluharty to yield. Fluharty agreed. What followed was one of the more remarkable exchanges of the 2026 legislative session.

“Can You Point to Where It Says That?”

Leavitt asked Fluharty directly: where in UOCAVA does it say what you’re claiming? Show me the specific provision.

Fluharty pointed to subsection E of 52 USC 20302.

Leavitt was already looking at it. Subsection E, as it appears in the code, deals with the designation of means of electronic communication for absent uniformed service voters. It has nothing to do with ballot receipt deadlines.

Fluharty then did something that should trouble anyone who watched the exchange: rather than acknowledge the miss, he pivoted. He claimed that actually, it was the Help America Vote Act that contained the requirement he was describing.

He could not say where in HAVA.

“Believe they do,” was about as specific as Fluharty got when pressed on whether other states with similar receipt deadlines had carveouts for military voters.

The exchange is preserved in the House floor audio. Anyone can listen to it.

What the Law Actually Says

A review of the relevant federal code does not support Fluharty’s claim. UOCAVA’s key provisions center on registration and ballot access for uniformed service members and overseas citizens, with the 45-day ballot transmission requirement designed to give voters enough time to vote and return their ballots. The statute does not explicitly prohibit states from setting an election day receipt deadline.

In fact, 21 other states already require absentee ballots to be received by the close of polls on election day. Those laws have not been struck down.

David Cook, deputy secretary and general counsel to the West Virginia Secretary of State, testified during committee hearings that he understood HB 4600 would supersede UOCAVA, meaning ballots not received by election day would not be counted, including UOCAVA ballots. That’s a legitimate policy concern worth debating. It is not the same as saying the law prohibits West Virginia from setting such a deadline.

West Virginia also has an additional protection Fluharty never mentioned: the state is one of four in the country that allows UOCAVA voters to return ballots through a secure online portal, meaning military and overseas voters can cast their ballots electronically and have them received instantaneously without relying on international mail timelines.

The Broader Picture

There are legitimate arguments against HB 4600. The bill does create real risk for voters who mail ballots in good faith and have no control over postal delivery. The legislation’s lead sponsor, Del. Rick Hillenbrand (R-Hampshire), has pointed to a December 2025 statement by the United States Postal Service that postmarks may not accurately reflect when mail was actually sent, which cuts against the postmark system but also highlights how dependent voters already are on a postal system that doesn’t always cooperate.

Even some Republicans voted against the bill, including Del. Keith Marple (R-Harrison), who called it “an affront to the voters of West Virginia” and argued that many elderly voters rely on absentee ballots and should not lose their vote because the post office was slow.

Those are fair points. They deserve a fair hearing.

But they are not the argument Fluharty made. Fluharty didn’t argue the bill was bad policy. He argued it was illegal, citing a specific federal law. When pressed on the specifics, he pointed to a provision that did not say what he claimed, then shifted to a different law he also could not cite with any precision.

The bill passed the House 77-17 and moved to the Senate. It generated nearly an hour of floor debate and a few news stories. Not one of those stories noted that the Minority Whip’s central legal argument had collapsed live on the floor when a freshman member with a law school background asked him to show his work.

Why It Matters

West Virginia’s nine-member House Democratic caucus is a small group operating without majority power. Their most valuable tool in any floor debate is credibility. When the minority whip stands up and tells the chamber that a bill violates federal law, members listen. Bills die on that kind of claim, or at minimum the political cost of voting for them goes up.

When that claim turns out to be one that doesn’t hold up to five minutes of Westlaw research, it poisons the well for the next time Democrats cry federal preemption. And given the volume of legislation moving through a Republican supermajority legislature, there will be a next time.

Nobody called it out. The Capitol press corps wrote straight news stories quoting Fluharty’s dire warnings and moved on. The bill passed anyway.

One freshman member with a law school background and enough nerve to ask a follow-up question was the only person in that chamber who put the actual statute in front of the Minority Whip and said: show me.

Fluharty couldn’t.

SIDEBAR: What Does HB 4600 Actually Do?

For readers who want just the facts on the legislation at the center of this debate, here is a plain-language breakdown.

What the current law says: Under existing West Virginia code, an absentee ballot is valid if it is postmarked by election day and received by county clerks before the official canvass, which typically takes place one to two weeks after the election. Hand-delivered ballots must arrive by the day before the election.

What HB 4600 changes: The bill moves the deadline for all absentee ballots, regardless of how they are submitted, to 8:00 p.m. on election night. A ballot postmarked on election day but received the following day would not be counted.

Who is affected: The new deadline applies to standard absentee voters, military and overseas voters covered by UOCAVA, and voters submitting ballots through the Secretary of State’s electronic portal. The cut-off to request an absentee ballot would also move one week earlier under the bill.

Why sponsors say it’s needed: Lead sponsor Del. Rick Hillenbrand (R-Hampshire) has cited a December 2025 USPS statement indicating that postmarks do not necessarily reflect the actual date mail entered the postal system, undermining the reliability of postmark-based verification. Supporters also argue that firm election night deadlines provide clarity and align West Virginia with accepted practice in nearly half the country.

The military voter question: West Virginia is one of four states that allows UOCAVA voters to return completed ballots through a secure online portal, which means the electronic submission option is available to military and overseas voters regardless of where they are stationed. Critics note, however, that not all such voters may be aware of or able to use the portal.

The bipartisan dissent: Opposition to the bill was not strictly partisan. Eight Republicans joined the full Democratic caucus in voting against HB 4600, with several citing concerns about elderly and rural voters who depend on mail-in absentee ballots and have no control over postal delivery times.

Where the bill stands: HB 4600 passed the House 77-17 on February 10 and was sent to the state Senate where it died in the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Senator Tom Willis.

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