Buying the Mountain State: The Out-of-State Money Machine Remaking West Virginia's GOP
A sitting governor is using a PAC funded almost entirely by out-of-state billionaires to primary his own Republican colleagues. Voters deserve to ask: whose legislature would this actually be?
West Virginia has never been for sale at retail prices. The state’s small population, modest media market, and relatively low campaign costs have long made it an attractive proving ground for outside ideological money. But what is unfolding in the weeks before the May 12 Republican primary is something different in kind, not just degree.
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 🐝