Curtis Tate spoke with Sam Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University, about what the changes mean for the state.
A lot has changed in West Virginia’s congressional delegation since the election. Sen. Joe Manchin retired and former Gov. Jim Justice took his place. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito moved up in seniority. And former state Treasurer Riley Moore began his first term in the House of Representatives.
Curtis Tate spoke with Sam Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University, about what the changes mean for the state.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tate: I spoke to former Congressman Nick Rahall recently. When he was elected in 1976, West Virginia had two very powerful and senior senators and six members of the House. Hasn’t the state’s influence diminished in Washington since?
Workman: You can’t lose senators like (Robert) Byrd, (Jay) Rockefeller and now Manchin over the course of not a very long time in political terms, institutional terms, and not have slightly diminished power, in the delegation. And that diminishment comes along sort of two dimensions. The first is we’re replacing senior senators. It’s not so much that there’s a step down from Manchin to Capito. It’s more just that we have two members of our delegation, Moore and Justice, who are new members. And new members, of course, have to sort of work their way up and gain the expertise necessary for the committees they’re on. That’s less a constraint on Justice, more so on on Riley Moore, just because of the committees they’ve been appointed to.
But there’s also another dimension that is at play since Representative Rahall was in office, and that is that in both chambers, the leadership, relative to the committees, controls a lot more in the modern Congress. Used to be that lots of things were delegated to subcommittees, and in particular, subcommittee chairs had a lot of power, and that’s a little less so now. Especially in the Republican Party, the leadership really sets the agenda in a much more hard way for the caucus. Now, the member of our delegation that looms large here is Senator Capito, because she obviously has climbed the ranks within the Republican leadership. She is the committee chair for policy for the Republicans, so that’s a big deal. So while the delegation as a whole probably has less power than some of the past delegations, certainly she has a tremendous amount of power.
Tate: Rahall had a very active first two terms, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Carter signed a lot of legislation he supported. Do you think we could expect the same from Riley Moore?
Workman: The thing we have to have to remember, too, when we’re talking about our delegation, is the tremendous political change that’s occurred in the state in my lifetime, certainly since Representative Rahall was in office. When we think about legislative success, there’s a fundamental asymmetry that should at least guide the broad outlines of our thinking on that. And it involves the fact that typically, Democrats see a very active, even proactive role for government involvement in an entire range of issues that are not only important in the state, but nationally, Republicans do not. They see themselves as sort of maintaining local control, putting the brakes on government, and that fundamental asymmetry alters what we would probably consider to be legislative success.
Tate: A lot of the work of members of Congress does involve constituent services. Wouldn’t someone like Moore get involved if, say, a veteran in the Eastern Panhandle needed help with VA benefits?
Workman: I have every expectation that his office would get involved. I don’t see a big difference in the parties in terms of basic levels of constituent assistance, in terms of service, government, goods and products and all of that sort of stuff. I think it’s important to remember that our state is unique in that the Republican delegation here has historically, at least so far, supported many broad based things to improve the economy here. And so I don’t see any huge difference in terms of constituency service for many of these things. Riley Moore has deep roots in the state. He understands his family, understands has had deep roots here for a long time, and understands sort of the plight of many West Virginians, and if we’re talking about the issue of veterans, especially veterans, I think that will just be par for the course as we move forward.
Tate: Can Justice carve out a meaningful role in the Senate when he’s near the bottom in seniority?
Workman: The reality is, for a freshman senator, it’s pretty tough. I will note, though, that he appears to be on the Energy Committee and Agriculture Committee. So those are issues that he has dealt with for a lifetime. It’s where his businesses are. His entrepreneurship has been located in those issues substantively. That is some indication that at least he can have a say on issues that are important, not just to him personally, but the state.
I would also note that it’s hard to handicap Senator Justice’s influence, because, as we know, he is a big buddy of President Trump. I think that alone probably lends him a bit more influence than the average senator would have. They know each other, their families know each other, and there’s a long relationship there. It’s not like he was on President Trump’s radar just this year. He was a prominent figure in Trump’s first administration. I think anyone expecting the similar level of influence we would for, say, an average freshman, that’s probably not the case for Senator Justice, but we have to wait and see how he makes use of that relationship in terms of being a senator, and the extent to which he does.
Tate: Would Justice’s or Capito’s influence wane if the White House changes parties in 2028?
Workman: Certainly it does and more so for Senator Justice than for Senator Capito. I only say that because Senator Capito has been around for a while now and has worked her way up the ranks of the party. She played a prominent role in President Biden’s administration, in terms of being there. Just think about the number of times we saw her at the podium with Senator (Mitch) McConnell, representing the Republican leadership. So it does matter. I think it matters disproportionately for Senator Justice. Senator Capito has been in politics a while. Senator Justice, he’s always sort of forged his own brand of doing the job of a politician. Who’s to say what the future holds there, and whether those folks would stick around for another Democratic presidential administration? They might, but I don’t think we know anything about that.
