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.

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

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.

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

A Plan Already in Motion

To understand what is at stake, it helps to remember how we got here. In March 2023, Governor Jim Justice signed House Bill 2526 into law. The bill delivered the largest income tax cut in state history, slashing rates by 21.25 percent across the board. But the architects of that legislation were wise enough to build in a safeguard: a revenue trigger.

The trigger is elegant in its logic. It works like this: whenever West Virginia’s annual revenue collections surpass the general fund revenue collected in 2019, adjusted for inflation, the income tax rate automatically drops by a set percentage, up to 10 percent per year. Hit the benchmark, earn the cut. Miss it, the rate holds steady. The mechanism was explicitly designed to let the state “march to zero” on the income tax over time, but only when the economy is strong enough to absorb the loss in revenue. It was, in short, a responsible conservative plan built for the long game.

The plan has worked. It triggered a 4 percent reduction that took effect on January 1, 2025. The state officially certified that cut in August 2024, with then-Governor Justice declaring, “Our state is on a pathway to eliminating its personal income tax. Let’s keep the ball rolling.” In late 2024, the legislature passed SB 2033 in a special session, locking in the lower rates for 2025 and extending the trigger framework for future reductions.

The people of West Virginia, for their part, have embraced this approach. They like the plan. They want the income tax gone. What they do not want is for someone to throw out the rulebook in the name of political enthusiasm.

A Governor in a Hurry

In his State of the State address in January 2026, Governor Patrick Morrisey called on the legislature to pass a 10 percent across-the-board income tax cut, bypassing the trigger mechanism entirely. Flanked by Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist at a subsequent press event in Parkersburg, the Governor argued that the state had earned the cut through budget discipline, citing a $128 million surplus at the midpoint of the current fiscal year and nearly $6.5 billion in newly announced private investment since October.

The Senate agreed and passed Senate Bill 392 on a 28-4 vote, cutting personal income tax rates by approximately 10 percent, retroactive to January 1, 2026. If fully implemented, it would return roughly $250 million to taxpayers annually. The House, however, was not so quickly convinced.

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, a Republican from Wood County, said the quiet part out loud. “We have a tax plan in place,” Criss told reporters. “We have a formula in place that works.” He warned that accelerating cuts beyond what the economy can support is how you end up in a fiscal crisis. He remembered the late 1980s, when West Virginia found itself in a taxing spiral after similar miscalculations. “Bring me the economy,” Criss said flatly, when told the Governor wanted to cut taxes regardless of whether the growth benchmarks had been met.

State Senator Eric Tarr, Republican from Putnam County and the former Senate Finance Committee chairman, voted against the bill containing the tax cut, warning that any reductions running ahead of the state’s 3 percent economic growth rate would force a future legislature to either raise taxes or make cuts nobody wants to vote on. As of this writing, the legislature and Governor appear to be settling toward a compromise around a 5 percent cut, with the House holding firm against the full 10 percent proposal. The session wraps on March 14.

Meanwhile, the Roads Are Grading Themselves

While the tax debate consumes Charleston, the asphalt is doing its own accounting. In December 2025, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave West Virginia an overall infrastructure grade of D+. The state maintains the sixth-largest highway system in the nation, covering 38,000 miles of roadway and 7,000 bridges. That is a remarkable amount of pavement for a state of 1.8 million people, and it costs a remarkable amount of money to keep it from falling apart.

The price tag for fixing what is broken is staggering. Across just seven infrastructure categories including roads, bridges, schools, and water systems, the state faces an estimated $13 billion in funding needs over the coming years. Annual pavement maintenance costs alone are projected to approach $400 million. And rather than increasing investment to meet that challenge, Governor Morrisey used line-item vetoes on the FY2026 budget to cut $25 million from road maintenance through the State Road Fund and another $25 million from the Division of Highways surplus fund, stripping out $50 million in road funding the legislature had approved.

Lawmakers took note. The line-item vetoes did not sit well with them. The budget this year was passed in record time and submitted to the governor well before the close of the session. This was by design. The governor has five days to approve the budget and to make any line-item vetoes. The legislature will have time to override any changes the governor makes to the budget that is not to their liking.

In addition to line-item veto fears, federal transportation funding to the state is not guaranteed to hold at current levels. If those dollars shrink or disappear, West Virginia will need its own resources ready to fill the gap, and cutting $250 million in annual income tax revenue is not the way to build that cushion.

The West Virginia Business and Industry Council, not exactly a left-wing organization, has made infrastructure investment a priority issue for two consecutive legislative sessions. Their logic is simple: you cannot attract businesses to a state where the trucks hauling their goods lose axles on county roads. Good roads are not a government handout. They are the foundation of a functioning economy, and in a state as geographically rugged and rurally dispersed as West Virginia, they are non-negotiable.

The WASP Position: Honor the Plan, Fix the Roads

Let’s be clear about where we stand. The West Virginia WASP wants the income tax eliminated. Full stop. It is a drag on economic competitiveness, a penalty on work and wages, and an obstacle to population growth in a state that can ill afford to keep losing people. Neighboring states are cutting their rates and watching people and businesses respond. The vision of a zero income tax West Virginia is the right one.

But the vehicle for getting there matters enormously. The legislature built a sensible, sustainable machine in 2023. It requires the economy to demonstrate strength before the state absorbs additional revenue losses. It caps annual reductions at 10 percent to prevent fiscal whiplash. It is a measured climb toward a goal that, if we stick with it, we will actually reach. Tossing that mechanism aside because a surplus showed up at halftime is the fiscal equivalent of a dieter declaring victory after one good week.

Governor Morrisey’s heart is in the right place. And some of his arguments are worth hearing. The state has done legitimate work to tighten its belt, and fiscal discipline deserves recognition. If trigger benchmarks are met going forward, West Virginians should absolutely receive the cuts. But “we have a surplus right now” is not the same as “the benchmarks have been met.” The trigger exists precisely to make that distinction.

In the meantime, 71 percent of the most engaged voters in this state are telling their elected officials something that should be impossible to ignore: fix the roads. Not someday. Now. Before the federal money dries up. Before another bridge goes on the weight-restriction list. Before another family in a hollow somewhere watches a school bus take the long way because the short way isn’t safe anymore.

West Virginia does not have to choose between fiscal conservatism and functional roads. The trigger plan is the conservative path to income tax elimination. A serious investment in roads and bridges is the conservative path to a growing, competitive state. Both goals fit in the same budget. What they do not survive is impatience.

Let the trigger do its job. Let the economy earn the next cut. And while we are waiting for that, let us patch the holes in the road. West Virginians have been patient. Their roads should show it.

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