Conservative Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

W.Va. Legislative ‘Freedom Caucus’ Pushes Far Right Agenda

Foster said the Freedom Caucus will focus on smaller government, more tax cuts and protecting personal freedoms, yet it opposes any abortions and trans health care.

Twenty-five West Virginia House of Delegates members and seven Senators make up West Virginia’s Freedom Caucus.

Del. Geoff Foster, R-Putnam, chairs the group. Sen. Patricia Rucker, R-Berkeley is vice chair. Other Caucus leaders are Del. Bill Ridenour, R-Jefferson, and Del. Geno Chiarelli, R-Monongalia.

Foster said the Freedom Caucus will focus on smaller government, more tax cuts and protecting personal freedoms, yet it opposes any abortions and trans health care.

“The right to murder a child is not something that the Freedom Caucus would support,’ Foster said. “Republicans in West Virginia seem to be far to the right of what’s getting passed and what the public believes, therefore, to the right of what the actual leadership is passing.”

Foster said a majority of citizens in his 20th district objected to many Republican-supported COVID-19 regulations.

“Whenever the governor shut down the state and said people couldn’t have Thanksgiving dinner and all the restaurants had to be shut down,” Foster said. “I got hundreds of phone calls — about half saying we need to do something about it, we need to keep the state open. People weren’t getting what they wanted out of the representation.”

Foster said what he calls “reckless’ spending bills passed by more centrist Republicans do not align with caucus members’ constituencies. He said it’s “reckless” to give incentives to out-of-state companies like Nucor and Form Energy, or $45 million to a Marshall University Cybersecurity Institute. He said the state’s new business efforts won’t produce expected employment.

“That economic development spending, in many cases, doesn’t translate down to the jobs that it promises,” Foster said. “I believe that getting rid of the burdensome red tape is the way to get businesses to come here, not just taking West Virginia tax dollars and giving it to an out-of-state business.”

The state’s conservative West Virginia Chamber of Commerce gave Foster and other Freedom Caucus leaders middle of the road scores in assessing votes on business-related issues and leadership qualities. Foster chuckled in considering the Chamber “conservative.”

“I don’t believe that the Chamber of Commerce is conservative, or has the same issues in mind,” Foster said. “I believe I supported 80 percent of the bills that they suggested were good bills, but then I got somewhere around a 50 percent rating. It’s a very odd rating system that they have.”

Foster said the Freedom Caucus will get involved in primary elections and have its own scorecard for how legislators vote on the bills they plan to present.

“That’s going to be public information,” he said. “Also, we will send it out to the delegates, so they know where they’re falling. There’s going to be prior announcements of bills and issues that are supported by the Freedom Caucus.”

Foster said for many issues, there’s no middle ground, no compromise.

“We will vote for what’s best for the people,” Foster said, “What West Virginians want is people that are willing to fight for the issues that they’re impressing on us that are important to them.”

Ousted Senate Candidate Asks Supreme Court To Halt Ballot Removal Proceedings

The 8th District Senate candidate, Andrea Kiessling, wants the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to keep her on the May 10th Republican primary ballot. On Wednesday, Kanawha Circuit Judge Duke Bloom ruled Kiessling did not meet the constitutional requirement that a candidate live in West Virginia five years prior to the election.

She asked for a stay to halt the court orders and filed an appeal to reverse the judges decision.

The original complaint said Kiessling lived in North Carolina for much of those five years and Bloom agreed.

Kiessling’s appeal argues the complaint came down too late, that facts of residency were not proved and that there is a post-election remedy that could be used for investigating possible candidate disqualifications.

Bloom ordered Secretary of State Mac Warner to withdraw Kiessling’s certificate of candidacy, disregard all her votes and post signs at polling places declaring her ineligible for office.

A spokesman from the Secretary of State’s office remained concerned with possible voter disenfranchisement over the more than 800 ballots cast prior to Bloom’s decision and said this was a precedent setting case.

After a Thursday afternoon decision by the West Virginia State Election Commission, Secretary of State Mac Warner said he would immediately have all election parties involved in the five county 8th Senate District (Roane, Clay and parts of Kanawha, Putnam and Jackson) begin carrying out Bloom’s orders.

Justices have asked for a response to Kiessling’s request for a Stay by 1 p.m. Friday.

Meet Delegate-Elect for the 65th District, Jill Upson

On Election Day last week, Republican Jill Upson defeated Democrat Tiffany Lawrence for the House of Delegates in the 65^th District.

Jill Upson was born in California. After marrying her husband who works in the military, they had to relocate every two years. Eleven years ago, she and her husband moved to Charles Town in Jefferson County. Upson decided then she didn’t want to live anywhere else.

“When we got to this area, I just fell in love with it, and I just decided I’m done, that’s it, I’m going to stay here,” Upson said, “And so he continued to receive orders, and move every two years, and I still stayed put. He’s been all over the place, but I stayed and raised my children in Jefferson County.”

Around 2009, after identifying as A-political for most of her life, Upson became interested in politics and specifically, Republican ideology. She started working with other candidates by volunteering and going door-to-door to interact with potential voters on their behalf. When the House of Delegates seat in the 65^th District became available in 2012, Upson almost didn’t run.

“I initially said, no, that I wasn’t interested, and just through an entire series of events that occurred in my life, I decided that this was probably a good time to go ahead and give it a try.”

Upson lost in the 2012 election to Tiffany Lawrence, but this year the outcome was different. Her win surprised her.

“What happened was the day of the election, I was online looking at the different projections, and they said that I probably wouldn’t win, they said that the incumbent had a lot more money, and obviously incumbency is a benefit, and they just said that, you know, with the larger turnout that they were seeing, that they were thinking that I wasn’t going to win. So I was very surprised when I ended up winning by the margin with which I won, I mean that was really a pleasant surprise.”

Upson upset Lawrence with 56 percent of the total vote. She says she’ll stand for more conservative values in Charleston.

“Well I stand for fiscal conservative policies. I ran on enhancing education, restructuring our tax policy, on regulatory policies, and my tagline was ‘freedom and opportunity,’ so obviously individual freedom and economic opportunity.”

Upson says she has a list of things she wants to work on once she’s in office.

“The first thing I want to look at is, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce came out with several policies that they put forth during the last legislative session that they felt would help spur economic growth, so I’d like to work with my colleagues in the legislature to really look at ways that we can start to implement some of those policies.”

Her ultimate goal is to always remember the voters who put her in office. She says she wants to be open and listen to the people, keeping their needs in mind and the lines of communication open between the Eastern Panhandle and Charleston.