As Republicans in West Virginia prepare for what is expected to be a brutal primary season, the state’s Democrats are bolstering their resources for the November general election, where they hope to regain some of the ground lost in the state since 2014.
As of Friday, 154 Republicans have filed pre-candidacy forms for the 2024 election cycle, compared to just 23 Democrats West Virginia Secretary of State. The filing deadline for the 2024 election is January. Candidates who filed are vying for positions in the state legislature up to the governor’s office.
The contest for Republicans is a continuation of trends from recent elections, in which Republicans ran uncontested for numerous Senate and House seats across the state.
In 2022, according to them Office of the Secretary of StateTwenty-five Republicans won their state legislative races without facing an opponent in the general election. That’s more than twice as many uncontested statehouse races won by Republicans in 2020, up from 12. The 2020 election was a victory for Republicans compared to 2018, when three Republicans and four Democrats won their general elections without challengers.
Last month, the Democratic Party launched a nationwide candidate recruiting effort. According to Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, the state Democratic Party chairman, said the party expects to have powerful candidates in every race it can recruit for by January. If they succeed, it would be the first time in at least four elections that Democrats would be able to hold a full vote.
The state’s political landscape has changed tremendously in the last 10 years. In 2014, Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature For the first time in 83 years. Since then – and especially after the redistribution in 2021 consolidated Republican influence It was a downhill race in the state election that ended with the right controlling all branches of government in a once reliably blue state.
For today’s Democrats, the challenge—and consequences—of winning elections grows greater with each cycle. The first step to regaining and maintaining even a semblance of political control, Democratic Party officials say, is to find quality, reliable and willing candidates who have the time and resources to run sophisticated campaigns.
“It’s a lot easier to recruit candidates when you’re the majority party, and that was the case when Democrats were in control,” Del said. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, chairman of the state Democratic Party. “The reason so many Republicans are dropping out early and raising so much money is because there are going to be very costly and ugly primaries. We don’t need to worry about that. We will put all our strength into winning over the general and not fight each other.”
And Republicans have fought each other in subtle and obvious ways as their control of the state has grown. There are various Republican factions in the House of Representatives who, although they mostly vote together, compete against each other to prove who is more conservative.
Those views — and the number of Republicans elected to represent West Virginia residents — do not reflect the state’s electorate, Pushkin said.
“Their views are not the views of the average West Virginian, and the priorities they set, the policies they support, do not serve the average West Virginian,” Pushkin said. “We need to give people choices on the ballot, and that’s what we’re working on right now.”
In 2014, the percentage of registered Democrats in West Virginia fell below 50% – for the first time ever to 49.9%. Until 2022The share of registered voters who identified as Democrats fell even further, to 33.22%. And while the share of registered Republicans has increased in those years, reaching about 39% in 2022, the increases have not matched the rate at which Republicans are winning elections. Those leaving the Democratic Party are not flocking to the Republican side; Instead, they often register as independent voters or with third-party groups.
“We know there aren’t many elected Democrats in West Virginia right now and not nearly as many people are voting Democrat as they used to,” Del said. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, is currently running a campaign for state Senate. “There are a lot more independents today and people who don’t like political parties at all and maybe don’t fit into a black-white party system.”
In some parts of the state, Garcia said, politicians who “put an ‘R’ next to their name” do so because they see it as an “easier” way to win a seat in a party quickly written off as deep-rooted. red state. Representatives from the state Republican Party did not respond to interview requests for this article.
According to Garcia, the political environment in West Virginia is not as parched as it might seem to outsiders. There are no customary “liberals” and “conservatives” here, and to believe that there are can be a harmful oversimplification.
“Everyone is a little different and their priorities are a little different, but the right priorities are the ones that work for ordinary working class people. That doesn’t exist with labels that lack nuance,” Garcia said. “When people ask me to call me a ‘liberal.’ [nationally] I can’t really think of who I would most identify with because I can’t think of anyone who reflects my beliefs. I know a lot of conservatives say Donald Trump, and I really wonder how many of them believe that and how many just want to profit from the message it sends.”
And party affiliation is complicated in West Virginia, where “Democrats” have historically represented a distinct classification and not necessarily reflected the policies or priorities of the national party.
Making matters worse at times is the number of politicians in the state who have switched parties after being elected. In 2014, Republicans only gained control of the state Senate because former Del. Daniel Hall, who was elected as a Democrat to represent Wyoming County, changed his party registration the day after his election.
Since 2014, a number of lawmakers have followed Hall’s lead, with most joining the Republican majority and now the supermajority. The most notable change came from Gov. Jim Justice in 2017 surprised his employees and supporters by joining then-President Donald Trump — his “friend” — on stage at a campaign rally and announcing that he would officially join the Republican Party.
Since then, Justice has repeatedly praised himself for his “conservative values.”
For Paul Detch, an attorney who chairs the Democratic Party in the Greenbrier County Judicial District, the governor’s party switch was one of the most notable events that put the state’s Democrats in the position they currently find themselves in. The other, Detch said, is the ever-growing influence and national prominence of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-Wa.
The state’s juvenile people don’t relate to the senator — who is the only remaining Democrat holding statewide office in West Virginia — and his centrist policies have made it tough for different factions of the once-powerful party to agree, Detch said. It’s a reflection of the identity crisis facing Democrats nationwide, but it’s hitting West Virginia particularly difficult, Detch continued.
“I think it’s fair to say that to some extent we don’t know what the answer to all of these questions is at the moment, but we’re trying to find it. We’re trying to develop a group of young Democrats, and it’s been very difficult to recruit them because of national politics. They want to be on their own, to be independent, and I understand that,” Detch said.
“The best thing we can do now is say, ‘Look, practically speaking, the state is swirling around the toilet and only the juvenile people can save it.’ Tell us what to do and we will listen. Then we have to listen,” he continued. “We want young people to lead us, they are our only path to progress.”
Both Pushkin and Detch lamented how the state had been run in the nearly decade since Republicans took power. Pushkin cited, among other things, the state’s Department of Health and Human Resources’ repeated failures to support foster children and other marginalized populations, the growing and deadly challenges facing the state’s prisons, and the lack of investment in programs that support the state’s most vulnerable.
When Democrats had control of the state for decades, Republicans leveled the same criticism at them. Today, Pushkin said, the situations are not comparable.
“It’s never been like this before. We didn’t have a government that defied the laws and didn’t respond to them [Freedom of Information Act requests]a governor who refused to allow the media to attend press conferences and provide real answers to pertinent questions. There were checks and balances that simply don’t exist today,” Pushkin said. “This is all happening under Republican rule. When there is one party that has so much power, it leads to bad government and it is not a government for the people. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced a time in our history when our state government was so completely dysfunctional.”
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