The GOP Senate Civil War, Part 1: Inside the Republican Primary Battle That Could Reshape West Virginia's Upper Chamber
This is Part 1 of a three-part series examining the 2026 West Virginia Republican Senate primaries. Part 2 will take a deep dive into the races that will decide control of the chamber. Part 3 will cover the sleepers, the specials, and the rest of the board. Follow us on X @wvwasp and at wvwasp.com so you don’t miss them.
The May 12 Republican primary is two months away, and the real fight for control of the West Virginia State Senate is not between Republicans and Democrats. It never was. It is a multi-faction Republican brawl that could determine the chamber’s leadership, its legislative priorities, and whether Senate President Randy Smith keeps his gavel.
Forty-eight Republican incumbents across the Legislature (House and Senate) face contested primaries this cycle. That is the highest share of contested incumbents since 2010, and for the second consecutive cycle, every single contested incumbent is a Republican. Democrats have their own primary contests this year, 22 of them, but not one involves a sitting Democratic incumbent. When it comes to the fight over who holds power in the Legislature, the battle is being waged entirely inside the GOP.
And nowhere is that more visible than in the State Senate, where 19 of 34 seats are on the May ballot, where at least a dozen of those feature serious challengers, and where a few Republican insiders tell the WASP they expect up to seven or eight new senators when the dust settles. That would be roughly a quarter of the chamber.
The Factions
To understand the primary, you first have to understand that the West Virginia Senate Republican caucus is not one team. There are several teams, and quite frankly, they do not like each other very much.
The coalition that made Randy Smith Senate president has fractured. According to multiple sources familiar with internal caucus dynamics, what was once a unified bloc has splintered into sub-factions with competing priorities and, in some cases, competing candidates. One of those sub-factions includes Sen. Eric Tarr (R-Putnam), the former Senate Finance chair, along with Sen. Rupie Phillips, Sen. Amy Grady, and Sen. Jason Barrett. Sources familiar with the situation described the Senate as “out of control and totally up for grabs during this primary election.”
Opposing them is not one challenger faction but a coordinated, multi-front recruitment operation. The WASP has confirmed that the effort involves Sen. Tom Takubo (R-Kanawha) and Wheelijg businessman David H. McKinley, the son of the former Congressman. He is the leader of the Mountaineer Freedom Alliance, an issue advocacy group. Additionally, several pro-jobs organizations across the state are involved. They are working different lanes but pointed in the same direction.
Takubo has been quietly encouraging a slate of challengers he hopes will redirect the Senate away from culture war politics and toward practical policy. Several of his recruits come from the healthcare sector, which has not gone unnoticed by his critics. Takubo told WV MetroNews he would not comment on specific races until after filing closed, but his fingerprints are on the effort. If his candidates win in large enough numbers, Takubo could position himself as the next Senate president.
Republican consultant Greg Thomas, the executive director of West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (CALA), has been working the other lane. Thomas’s grievance is different from Takubo’s. He believes Republican senators have become beholden to the personal injury bar, and he wants to replace them with candidates who will advance tort reform and prioritize economic development. Thomas has been open about what he is doing. “Over a decade ago, we ran a dozen campaigns against big-government, big spending anti-business liberal Democrats who took all of their money from Democrats and trial lawyers,” Thomas told MetroNews. “This year we are running about a dozen campaigns against big government, big spending anti-business liberal Republicans who are funded by Democrat trial lawyers.”
Thomas went further on MetroNews Talkline, arguing that populist Republicans have exhausted their agenda. “We took care of the social issues. We outlawed abortion in WV with exceptions; we banned transgendered surgeries... we did all of the things you would want to do,” Thomas said. “Now we have this new group that comes in and it’s like they’re jealous they didn’t get to vote on this stuff. So, they come up with these new fringe things and the next thing you know we’re talking about anti-vax.”
Different diagnoses, but the same patient. Takubo thinks the Senate is wasting time on fringe issues when it should be governing. Thomas thinks the Senate sold out on tort reform. McKinley brings political credibility and a strong pro-jobs agenda. Together, they represent the most organized challenge to sitting Senate leadership in the history of the Republican supermajority.
Smith, for his part, has declined to comment on any of the factional warfare, saying his focus was on the legislative session.
Another interesting aspect: Smith’s hold on the gavel is being tested from outside and inside his own coalition. Sources tell the WASP that both Sen. Tom Willis (R-Berkeley) and Sen. Brian Helton (R-Raleigh) have been positioning themselves as potential successors to the Senate presidency. Willis is currently running for the U.S. Senate against Shelley Moore Capito, which complicates his timeline, but the maneuvering itself signals that even members of the existing power structure see a leadership change coming and want to be in position when it happens.
The House-Senate Divide
If you want to understand why these challengers exist, look at how the two chambers performed during the 2026 session.
The House of Delegates, under Speaker Roger Hanshaw, passed a package of ten to twelve economic development bills. The Senate passed one, maybe two.
Thomas, in a radio interview on 580 WCHS, called that disparity “a travesty” and argued it reflects a fundamental problem with the current Senate. “A quarter of our state Senate is not gainfully employed,” Thomas said. “They haven’t figured out a way to get a job for themselves. How would they be able to figure out how to get a job for somebody else?”
That line is harsh, but it captures the frustration that the pro-jobs faction feels about a chamber they believe has lost its way. West Virginia has the lowest workforce participation rate in the country, a distinction it has held since 1976. The state has lost roughly 200,000 working-age residents over the past two decades. And yet, according to multiple Republican insiders, the Senate’s legislative priorities during the 2025 and 2026 sessions have tilted heavily toward social issues, mandates on businesses, and bills that critics say increase the cost of electricity, food, and insurance without addressing the underlying economic problems.
Tarr himself, before the session began, publicly told the West Virginia Press Association that the Republican Senate caucus had no consensus on a public policy agenda. He later put a finer point on it during a Talkline appearance: “It’s a frustration of mine to come in, as a senator in a Republican mega majority, come in and really not know what the plan is set, except for it to be a possible free for all.”
A Republican mega majority with no plan. That is not an opposition talking point. That came from a conservative senator who is himself facing a primary challenge in the 4th District, where two candidates filed against him without any help from the recruitment operation. According to a source close to the effort, “No one recruited those guys to run against Tarr.”
The Deterrent Effect
There is an argument, quietly made by those involved in the recruitment effort, that the challengers have already accomplished something just by filing.
The 2025 legislative session, by nearly universal agreement among Capitol insiders, was a disaster. Thomas publicly called it the “worst session ever.” After that session, Thomas went on statewide radio and publicly apologized for helping to elect bad candidates to the West Virginia Senate, as the WV WASP reported on X. He told the West Virginia Record that “even candidates who identified as conservative appeared to align with those interests once in office.”
The 2026 session, while far from perfect, was not as bad. The challengers’ camp believes that is not a coincidence. Having serious candidates on the ballot, with real resumes and real funding, checked some of the worst impulses in the chamber. The theory is simple: senators who know they have a primary opponent in May behave differently in February and March.
Whether that theory holds up is debatable. But the recruitment operation’s own people believe the threat of competition did more to moderate the Senate this session than anything the governor or the House leadership could have done on their own.
The Morrisey Factor
Governor Patrick Morrisey has inserted himself into the Senate primary picture, though not always in ways that help his own cause.
Morrisey posted on social media that the District 1 race between Sen. Laura Wakim Chapman and challenger Joe Eddy is “one of the defining races” of 2026, framing it as “common sense conservatism versus lefty extremism” in a Chapman-versus-Democrat matchup. The problem? Morrisey’s post pretended the Republican primary does not exist. Eddy was not mentioned. That was not an accident.
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, as Part 2 of this series will detail.
But here is the irony that multiple Republican insiders have pointed out: Morrisey’s own agenda, focused on economic growth and deregulation, would likely be better served by the challengers winning than by the current Senate leadership surviving. A GOP insider told the WASP that if the challengers succeed and Senate leadership turns over, “I think that would be the best thing. I think a lot of Morrisey’s agenda are things that the new pro-jobs, pro-growth candidates would want to work with him on.”
The governor, in other words, may be backing the wrong horses.
The Money Question
Every primary comes down to money and organization, and on this front, the picture is murky.
Brian Helton, a senator aligned with the incumbent faction, was telling allies he would raise $250,000 per race to defend the seats under threat. A person familiar with the fundraising landscape expressed deep skepticism to the WASP, saying he doubts the incumbent side has raised $250,000 total across all of their races.
The incumbents’ ground game, according to multiple sources, is built around the roughly 33 percent of Republican primary voters who reliably support Governor Morrisey. The theory is that Morrisey’s endorsement, where it comes, delivers a floor of support that can win a low-turnout primary.
The challengers are betting on a different model: candidates with real-world resumes who can make the case that they know how to create jobs because they have actually done it. Joe Eddy in the 1st District ran a manufacturing business with 400 employees. Dr. Steve Eshenaur in the 8th is an ER physician. Michael Jarrouj in the District 17 special is a restaurant owner who has created dozens of jobs. The argument is that voters want someone who has done something outside of politics, not another career officeholder.
Which model wins on May 12 will determine whether the West Virginia Senate looks the same in 2027 or whether it becomes a fundamentally different institution.
What This Is Really About
Strip away the personalities, and this primary is a referendum on what the Republican supermajority is for. West Virginia Republicans hold a 32-2 advantage in the Senate and a 90-9 edge in the House. They have the governor’s mansion. They have both congressional seats. They have both U.S. Senate seats. There is no Democrat anywhere in the state with enough power to block anything.
The voters watching this unfold are not asking which Republican faction is more conservative. They are asking why a party with that kind of power cannot seem to govern with it.
That is the question every one of these primary candidates will have to answer on May 12. 🐝
Next: Part 2 of “The GOP Senate Civil War” takes a district-by-district deep dive into the races that will decide control of the chamber, including exclusive sourcing on the dynamics inside Districts 1, 8, 9, 14, and 15. Follow the WV WASP on X @wvwasp and at wvwasp.com so you don’t miss it.