David Howell simultaneously directed Morrisey’s campaign, chaired his state PAC, and sat atop the super PAC that spent millions on his behalf. Federal law was designed to prevent exactly that.
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 🐝
This looks like coordination to me. How can he sit on the candidate’s committee and two PACs. Weird!