This is Part 3 of a three-part series examining the 2026 West Virginia Republican Senate primaries. Part 1 covered the factions, the dysfunction, and what is at stake. Part 2 took a deep dive into the six races that will decide control of the chamber. 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.