I had a wonderful vacation and cruise of the Caribbean, but after being back to work as of last week, part of me wishes I was still at sea. If I took a drink every time a candidate said “woke” or “radical,” I’d have alcohol poisoning.
The plus side is we’re 16 days out from the May 14 primary. Early in-person voting in West Virginia begins Wednesday and continues until Saturday, May 11, excluding Sundays at county courthouses and other designated polling locations. If we can just get through the next couple weeks, our mailboxes and airwaves should return to normal for a few months at least.
But until then, expect to be bombarded. That’s one of the reasons I started last summer doing interviews for this paper and for the Mountain State Views podcast focused on public policy and specifically what statewide candidates want to do. You can go back and find those articles and podcasts easily, and they’ll help you wade through the accusations and soundbites to get to what these candidates see as top priorities.
My advice is to ignore the ads and the mailers. Seek out multiple news outlets, read and/or listen to the interviews with the candidates. There has been at least one debate and a few forums. Seek those out and see how the candidates perform under pressure. Whatever you do, use this time to educate yourself before early voting or pulling that metaphorical lever on May 14.
–––
Mudslinging is nothing new in elections, but I’m very surprised by some of the mud being thrown and who is throwing it, including by people who I think are better than that.
For example, take a press release from Secretary of State and GOP candidate for governor Mac Warner sent on April 20 following the endorsem*nt of fellow GOP candidate for governor Moore Capito by Gov. Jim Justice.
Considering that Moore Capito’s mother – U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. – endorsed Justice last April and considering that Moore Capito announced his resignation from the House of Delegates last December to campaign full-time on one of Justice’s weekly administration briefings, most political watchers knew it was a matter of when, not if, Justice would endorse Moore Capito.
But Warner has gone so far as to call Justice’s Moore Capito endorsem*nt part of a scheme by retiring U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and former Manchin chief of staff and Justice company lobbyist Larry Puccio to take over the state Republican Party. Puccio, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party, was forced out of Democratic Party politics after continuing to support Justice after the governor’s switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in 2017 at the urging of former President Donald Trump.
Now, I’ve written plenty about Puccio over my time as a statehouse reporter beginning in 2009. One need only look at his lobbying clients to see he has his hands in some of the most lucrative contracts the state has with private vendors, such as Google, United Health System, FirstEnergy, etc. There is literally a rule named for him meant to prevent those in state government from becoming lobbyists for one year after leaving government service.
But is Puccio trying to take over the Republican Party in West Virginia? No. And if he is, he’ll have to do better than one $2,000 donation to Moore Capito, which accounts for .1% of the more than $1.9 million Moore Capito has raised election cycle-to-date.
Warner then goes on to accuse Manchin and Capito of operating a secret “cabal,” agreeing not to run against each other, and calling them “monarchs.” It is true that the families of Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito have been friends, going back to a friendship that the late Gov. Arch Moore had with Manchin’s father. But as someone who covers our congressional delegation, I can tell you that behind-the-scenes that friendship has been strained for at least the last four years.
Lastly, Warner accuses Puccio and the Capito family of working against an effort in January to prevent independents and unaffiliated voters from being able to vote in this year’s Republican primary. The state Republican Executive Committee ultimately approved an amendment that will close the GOP primary to unaffiliated voters in 2026.
My takeaway from that claim is a confirmation of something I reported in my Reporter’s Notebook column in January: that Mac Warner was one of several statewide candidates who were working behind-the-scenes to block unaffiliated voters from being able to vote in this year’s GOP primary.
Of note: While Warner was doing this, his own Secretary of State staff were advising committee members of the difficulty in closing the primary with only a few months’ notice. On top of that, the state County Clerk’s Association had also come out against closing the primary, concerned about trying to educate unaffiliated voters they would not be able to vote had the original motion passed.
Warner has remained consistently in fourth among the top four GOP candidates for governor. Even if unaffiliated voters had been prevented from voting in the Republican primary this year, it is unclear that would have helped him in the long run. Warner has very loyal supporters but has yet to clear the low teens in the last several independent and internal polls.
What is clear is if Warner does not win the primary, he’s going to have a lot of fence-mending to do. Warner has been able to testify before Congress about elections thanks to U.S. Sen. Capito. Between her time in the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, Capito has recommended several of the children of Warner and his brothers to military service academies. Capito has donated to various political campaigns for Warner and his brothers and shepherded the nomination of two Warner brothers for U.S. Attorney and U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development state executive director respectively.
