On this West Virginia Morning, an experimental apple orchard in the state is helping to fight pollution, improve food scarcity and some hope even heal veterans. Briana Heaney has the story.
With many candidates for 2024 state offices announcing early, campaign finances are beginning to flow.
This is what is known as the pre-candidate stage in the election cycle. To legally begin financing a campaign, candidates have to file with the Secretary of State’s (SOS) office. As a pre-candidate, one is not bound to run for office. On the SOS website, under elections, there’s a campaign finance reporting system tab.
Once filed for pre-candidacy, candidates must deliver detailed quarterly finance reports to the SOS. Missy Kinder, campaign finance specialist, said on the reporting system website the public can see how much money candidates have received from a person or group – and how much the candidate has spent.
“You can sort through the data by the race they’re entering, by office, by their political affiliation, there’s just several different ways that you can find the information that you’re looking for,” Kinder said.
Kinder said the website details money from fundraising events, campaign loans and just who is contributing to campaigns.
“If you’re looking to see if a certain individual has given to candidates, you can even break it down that far,” she said. “If they have contributed any expenditures that a particular candidate has made, you can search through that. There’s also a data download portion of our website that you can go to and that will show any transactions that have occurred in a regular calendar year.”
Relating to transparency in the election cycle, Kinder said it’s important to show that campaign contributions are coming from reliable sources legally allowed to give.
“Corporations cannot give,” she said. “If that corporation would have a separate segregated PAC, a political action committee, that political action committee can give. It all comes from West Virginia State Code.”
A West Virginia resident alerted the office of Secretary of State Mac Warner Thursday that a candidate's campaign messages misrepresented the dates of this year's primary election.
Early, in-person voting for West Virginia's 2024 Primary Election begins May 1. According to West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner, early voting will be conducted in all 55 counties through Saturday, May 11.
April 23 is the last day for West Virginia residents to register to vote in the state's primary election May 14. Early voting will be held in person from May 1 to May 11.
On this West Virginia Morning, political analysts say the two Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate in the upcoming May primary election give voters some particular, and troubling, food for thought. The candidates themselves say voters need to focus on the positives, not the negatives.