West Virginia’s Oct. 29 gubernatorial debate was recorded online. Watch it here through C-SPAN.
West Virginia’s candidates for governor took the debate stage at Fairmont State University Tuesday night.
Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Democratic Huntington Mayor Steve Williams fielded questions from West Virginia MetroNews host Hoppy Kercheval during the hour-long roundtable.
In closing arguments, Williams noted this was the first and only time the two would debate. As governor, Williams said he would lead with a community-centric approach, using his 12 years as mayor of Huntington as a model.
“My mission is to see that we transform our communities, that we transform our state,” Williams said. “One thing that I think that we can agree on is that West Virginia can be much better than what it is right now.”
Williams said that means making economically advantageous decisions from “a global market” perspective, and not just focusing on local politics.
“Where I part company with my friend here is that I’m not just talking about the backyard brawls,” he said in reference to Morrisey.
Morrisey highlighted his support for former President Donald Trump, a recurring theme in his comments throughout the debate. He also advocated for reducing government regulation, plus auditing and cutting down spending from state agencies.
“I look out and I see the potential of robust competition, making sure that our taxes are going to compete much better with all the states that we touch,” Morrisey said. “We could be thought of from a regulatory perspective the way Delaware is thought of from an incorporation perspective. It’s going to be very powerful.”
Abortion
Kercheval opened the debate by discussing constitutional amendments. He pointed specifically to a May petition from Williams to add an abortion measure on the ballot.
In 2018, West Virginia voters passed a constitutional amendment codifying that the State Constitution does not protect the “right to abortion” or “the funding of an abortion.”. After the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022, state lawmakers passed a law to ban abortion with few exceptions.
“I just don’t see that the state has any interest in coming in and interfering in the reproductive choices that women and their partner are going to make,” Williams said.
The U.S. Fourth Circuit of Appeals heard arguments about expanding the state’s ban to also include medicated abortion on Tuesday.
Morrisey defended the current ban, while also expressing support for in vitro fertilization, or IVF. The treatment helps individuals experiencing infertility get pregnant by conducting the egg fertilization process in a laboratory.
Morrisey described IVF protection as “a common sense law that’s being defended right now.”
“Let’s make sure we work through the court system, we get a result,” he said.
Education
The candidates also differed on their ideas surrounding school choice and educational funding.
In 2021, West Virginia established the Hope Scholarship. The program allows parents of K-12 youth to use funding the state allocates for their child on private school tuition, homeschooling costs or other qualifying educational expenses.
Morrisey said the Hope Scholarship could help improve low public school rankings. Eligibility for the scholarship is set to expand in the coming years.
“I want it to be the broadest in the country,” Morrisey said. “So we can start to show the metrics are improving, and then the public schools are going to be in a robust competition to follow.”
While Williams said he supports HOPE scholarships “used for a very specific purpose,” he expressed concern about taking money from struggling public schools.
“All of this rings to me as code for privatization,” Williams said.
Kercheval asked the candidates about the potential for school district consolidation. Neither expressed direct support for the plan.
“Give the local governments, give the county boards the ability to be able to make some decisions, but also create regional compacts where there can be a consolidation of administrative duties,” Williams said. “I think that’s just a matter of getting people around the table and talking about this.”
Morrisey did not address consolidation directly, but reiterated his broader plans for a government audit and restructuring proposal in response. He also said teachers in West Virginia “deserve a pay raise.”
“One of the things that West Virginia needs to do, it needs to be thinking about how it’s repurposing government into the future,” Morrisey continued. “There is a need for a thorough and efficient education, and if you can get rid of some of the bureaucratic waste, then I think we can do that more effectively.”
PEIA
During a special session of the West Virginia Legislature that ended in October, lawmakers passed $87 million in stop-gap funding for the state employee health insurance program after an unanticipated reserve shortfall.
Kercheval asked if the candidates supported a state employee pay raise to accommodate PEIA cuts, an approach Gov. Jim Justice has supported. Neither directly supported the raise.
“I’m not looking to create a pay raise,” Williams said. “I’m looking for a permanent fix.”
After the debate, Williams said his experience leading local government in Huntington would help him with financial decision-making as governor.
“We will involve teachers, we will involve public employees, and we will gather around and find a way that we make sure that this is funded properly for the last time,” Williams said. “I did this in Huntington, certainly on a smaller scale, but we were about to lose our health care plan … And now we’re operating with a deficit free budget.
In 2017, Huntington cut its budget deficit in half.
Morrisey again said reviewing state expenditures could be a catch-all solution.
“So I think we have to do what I mentioned before, do a close review and audit,” he said.
Jai Chabria, senior strategist for the Morrisey campaign, clarified to WVPB after the debate that Morrisey was cautious to commit to a fixed solution to PEIA too soon.
“While this might be a building problem, we’ve just now learned about how this has unfolded,” Chabria said. “I think there’s a very deliberate way in which we have to make sure we fix it, so it’s a long-standing fix and not something in the short term.”
Vaccination
During this year’s regular legislative session, West Virginia lawmakers passed a bill expanding vaccine exemptions for students. Gov. Justice later vetoed the bill. Kercheval asked both candidates where they stood on the issue.
Williams described the bill as an “overreach.”
“They’re getting into everybody’s business, and it’s none of their business,” Williams said.
Morrisey said he supported religious exemptions.
“West Virginia right now is an outlier with respect to that it’s not recognizing, at minimum, a religious exception,” Morrisey said. “It shows respect for the First Amendment, and I would make sure that that provision changes when I’m governor.”
Addiction Crisis
Williams said his experience as mayor during the opioid crisis in Huntington would help him better respond to the crisis on the state level. He said his opponent has a worse track record surrounding addiction.
“You were representing some of those same companies that we ended up suing,” Williams said to Morrisey. “Frankly, as I started looking more at this, I got angry.”
“He knows that we weren’t involved in any of those issues,” Morrisey rebutted.
Morrisey said he helped address the opioid crisis through successful litigation to distribute abatement money across the state, with Huntington opting out of the larger case. Huntington’s independent litigation is currently pending appeal.
“A couple years ago we put together an abatement structure for all 55 counties that earned the support of every county of virtually every municipality,” Morrisey said. “It passed unanimously through the legislature … Did the Attorney General not look out for Cabell County and Huntington? We did. We didn’t play politics there.”
Medically Assisted Suicide
This year, West Virginia voters will see a amendment on their ballot that would codify the illegalization of medically assisted suicide in the State Constitution.
The passage of Amendment 1 comes down to voters, although the practice of medically assisted suicide is already illegal in West Virginia.. The candidates were divided in their opinions on the measure.
“I’m for that amendment, and I think that we should protect our most vulnerable from physician assisted suicide,” Morrisey said.
“As I have said a few times, freedom is on the ballot here,” Williams said. “When someone is facing health decisions with their physician, it’s their business.”
Foster Care
Kercheval also asked candidates whether they would raise compensation for foster care families to address a growing foster care crisis in the state.
“We definitely need to raise the reimbursement for child, for foster care,” Williams said. Williams added that immediate tax cuts could reduce funding available for this goal.
Morrisey said a solution to shortages in West Virginia foster care providers lies in financial decision-making and recruitment efforts.
“I think that this is an area that’s really going to benefit from a lot of the auditing, the performance reviews, and I think [Williams] would agree with this, to be able to find the right people,” Morrisey said.
Past Experience
Toward the end of the debate, Kercheval asked the candidates about differences in their political experience.
Williams said his experience in Huntington qualified him for statewide executive office.
“The difference between the city and the state is nothing but zeros,” Williams said.
Williams also questioned the necessity of Morrisey’s audit proposals, given that the state already has an auditor in place.
“As the state attorney general, I’ve had to put broad coalitions together to get really big things done,” Morrisey said. He argued that reducing government spending would return money to taxpayers.
In the past, Williams has described Morrisey’s aims to reduce government regulation and spending as “Project 2025 for West Virginia,” referring to a conservative plan for a presidential transition that Trump has distanced himself from.
Speaking for Morrisey’s campaign, Chabria rebutted the characterization.
“That’s pretty much uniform on the Democratic side right now, trying to scare voters into something that it’s absolutely not,” Chabria said. “He’s going to cut taxes. He’s going to try to eliminate the income tax. He’s going to try to make sure that government works better. But he’s actually going to deliver on an audit.”
After the debate, Williams stood by his previous assertion.
“I do believe that when they’re saying ‘rightsizing’ government, they’re looking at privatizing and Project 2025,” Williams told WVPB.
Williams said Trump has only distanced himself from the plan as a political strategy.
Morrisey and his campaign team are “just following the political playbook on the R side,” Williams said.
Off Stage
Williams said it was a “shame” the two candidates were unable to debate more often, and that their only discussion came days before Election Day.
Tuesday’s debate came after a scheduling controversy in September, when a previously proposed WOWK debate did not come to fruition. The Williams campaign had called for multiple debates entering this year’s election.
Chabria emphasized that Morrisey was committed to participating in a debate.
“It was very important to Patrick Morrisey to actually have a debate, to make sure that people got to hear from him directly and to debate his opponent,” Chabria said.
In the state’s race for United States Senate, Gov. Jim Justice, the Republican candidate, declined to debate his opponent, Democrat and former Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott.
Outside of the debate hall, supporters for Libertarian candidate Erika Kolenich protested third party candidates’ exclusion from the gubernatorial debate.
By the close of polls on Monday, the Secretary of State’s office recorded 176,709 votes already cast. Early voting runs through Nov. 2 at locations throughout the state, and Election Day is Nov. 5.
