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We typically think of politics in America as pitting one party against another. Democrats versus Republicans. But with the primary election in West Virginia set for next month, something entirely different is happening in the supermajority Republican party. Leading Republicans are directly challenging other Republicans to try to steer the makeup of the West Virginia Legislature.
News Director Eric Douglas spoke with Marshall Political Science Professor Marybeth Beller about the context of these unusual moves and how they are shaking up the races and political watchers.
Early voting begins April 29 and Election Day is May 12.
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: Tell me what’s going on.
Beller: I think contextually, we have to realize that when any party has a supermajority, infighting is going to come up, because no party really has complete unity. When a party is a minority, it’s much easier to unify, because you’re up against such a hill to get any legislation passed that you can put aside not just personal differences, but some ideological differences.
I will suggest that we might look at what happened when the Democrats in the state legislature were a supermajority, and in 1994 the census data had come back, it was time to redistrict. They decided in the House to redistrict and gerrymander Pat White out of office. She was the chair at that time of Health and Human Services. She represented the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party and a lot of the conservatives in the house, even though they were Democrats, had big differences with her policy preferences.
We had that same upset in 1996, if you’ll remember. Two [state] Senators were running against one another, Charlotte Pritt and Joe Manchin. Charlotte Pritt won the Democratic primary for governor and Manchin spearheaded a campaign of conservative Democrats to join the Republicans in a coalition that ended up putting Governor Cecil Underwood back in office for the second time.
So, the Democrats had those same factions. It is not unusual that we’re now seeing the Republican Party, which has a supermajority in the House and in the Senate, coming down to factions.
Douglas: We’re seeing a political PAC ostensibly controlled by the Senate President actively campaigning against at least one member that I can think of, but probably more members, of the Senate itself of the Republican Party. So, we literally have the Senate President who is a Republican fighting against members of his own party. To me, that seems really unusual.
Beller: It is unusual. I suggest we’ve got two different things going on right now. Senate President [Randy] Smith is very new to this position. When the race was contested for who was going to be the Senate President, there were three different factions going on in the Senate.
The Senate only has 34 members, so three factions is a pretty big division, and no one, to my understanding, was willing to join in another coalition, and so Smith emerged as the moderate compromise candidate. It’s not like he had a huge coalition going in. This was his very first session, and right off of the bat, in early January, the chair of the Senate Health and Human Resources Committee resigned because she was disgruntled with what he was doing. So he had a really rough session.
I think we kind of compound that, though, with what’s going on nationally. President [Donald] Trump has changed the behavior of his party, which always led by that Ronald Reagan 11th commandment that you would never speak ill of a Republican. Trump has broken with that and has set a different example in his party that says, “Yes, anyone in our party that doesn’t fall in line with the executive will be targeted in a primary.”
Democrats are famous for that, but Republicans are fairly new to that. Governor [Patrick] Morrissey is doing the same thing. And so what Smith is doing, I agree, is unusual. However, we’re in a different political sphere now.
Douglas: Governor Morrissey is doing exactly the same thing. He’s come out and made endorsements. He’s endorsing specific candidates. He’s indicated that he wasn’t happy with the legislature and how they took up his agenda.
Beller: Yes, yes, yes. And I think Senate President Smith would like to better align himself with the governor, and the governor has not had a good relationship with the Senate or with the House. That relationship may not be repairable in the House, but I think Smith is trying to do so in the Senate.
Douglas: One of the other real splits I’ve seen, though, is basically the U.S. Senate race and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. She’s also come out endorsing specific candidates, mostly in opposition to the governor’s chosen candidates. Earlier in the session, probably in January, a group of Senate Republicans endorsed Senator Capito, came out publicly endorsing her, while one of their own members is actually running against her in the primary. It appears the party is literally split in two now with Senator Capito and the governor and Smith at odds.
Beller: We have to remember that politics is personal in West Virginia, regardless of party. The Senator’s son ran a campaign to become governor, and he put everything he had into it, and obviously lost that race to Morrissey in the primary. I don’t think there’s a lot of love going on between the Senator and the governor over many things, but certainly that is an element.
I would suggest also that we need to look past the legislature in terms of this Republican split, because Senator Capito is up for reelection this year, and so it is not unusual that we’re seeing Democrats run against her. There are five Republicans running in the US Senate primary, including, as you said, a legislator.
However, I think it’s indicative of two things, right? One is that Capito is losing momentum. She does not have the unified support in her party at all, and that could be for several different reasons. Another reason, though, that we have to keep in mind is that even if the Senator is successful in running for reelection, it might be her last term, she might want to step down and retire afterwards.
And so some of the Republicans who are running now might not actually agree with her, but they also might be on the ballot in order to start gaining name recognition, which is a game that a lot of people who want to be in politics in the future play when they understand they’re not going to have a successful race, but they want to start building that name recognition.
Douglas: Senator Capito is, what the number four Republican in the U.S. Senate. She’s highly placed within the party apparatus.
Beller: She is highly placed, and she has not been active in fighting against the DOGE cuts early on in this administration that hurt a lot of West Virginia workers. A lot of federal jobs are located in West Virginia thanks to former Senator Byrd who masterminded that whole scheme, and with the government shutdown, that has hurt a lot of West Virginians, and the Senator has not been forthcoming to try to mitigate that in any way. And I think that’s hurting a lot of people, and it could have an effect on legislative races, because most voters don’t discern between what is federal level and what is state level.
Douglas: What does the general election look like?
Beller: That depends on the primary. One thing that we need to look for in the general is that the Democratic Party has been moving rapidly to reorganize. It’s filling a lot of seats. In the last couple of elections, we had a lot of seats statewide that we didn’t have any Democrats on the ballot. For this time around, there are only two Senate seats out of 17 that are running that don’t have Democratic candidates. In the House, I think we only have 10 out of 100 races that aren’t filled on the Democratic ballot.
And so the Democratic Party is really moving to get candidates to run.
I think that we have to remember in 2015 when we had the Republican takeover, that did not happen overnight. That was years of work, hard work by the Republican Party to get candidates to run, to help reorganize the party and to build it. And I think we’re starting to see that now with the Democratic Party in the House. Now, the Democrats gaining control of either chamber on a state level is not going to happen, but they could have a significant gain in seats.
Douglas: Are there any surprises or any big messages to come out of the Democratic primary?
Beller: I think one of the things that might emerge from the Democrats is that we have had many years now of Republican control in the legislature, and the economic situation in the state has not changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse, and a lot of a lot of Republicans, particularly in the House of Delegates, continue to work on socially divisive issues as their priority, and then Democrats are starting to say, no. Those issues are real, certainly, but kitchen table issues have to come first. Right now, public schools in the state have been decimated by the millions of dollars going into the Hope Scholarship, into charter schools, and Democrats are saying we’ve got to take care of family budget issues. We need jobs here. We need decent schools. We need to be able to hire and keep teachers. So I think the Democratic message might resonate more with a lot of voters. Socially divisive issues are always going to be present, but if you can’t feed your family, that’s a different issue.
Douglas: At the federal level, we’re seeing interest rates going up. We’re seeing inflationary numbers. We’re seeing gas prices. Do you think any of that will shake down to the state level as well.
Beller: I think it’s wholly possible, again, because a lot of voters don’t distinguish between federal policy and national policy. West Virginia is a rural state. Even in the few urban areas that we have, we don’t have very good public transportation systems. Even in Kanawha County, the public bus doesn’t even run on Sundays, so people can’t get to work on Sundays anymore unless they have a car. So most West Virginians are trapped, required to have a car to get to work. Those gasoline prices are not helping them at all.
We have to remember TSA. People who work in this state have been badly affected by loss of pay. Those people are driving to work, and those people also are buying groceries. And while the price of some dairy and meat is coming down, other prices continue to soar. So a lot of West Virginia families are hurting, and I think it could have an effect on the legislature.
Douglas: Anything we haven’t talked about?
Beller: One big push the Democrats are making is to suggest that we need to release some rainy-day funds to help West Virginians who are in severe need. The case has been made successfully by Delegate Hornbuckle that says it would be perfectly legal to do that. The state has a huge rainy-day fund. We could do something, but all the governor has said is that he would like to take it under consideration. So there’s no real movement to do anything. And I think it could backfire on the governor and help the Democrats.