CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey handily won the West Virginia governor’s race on Tuesday, leveraging the support of former President Donald Trump to catapult him to victory in the deep red state.
Morrisey emphasized his role as a “conservative fighter” in court on issues ranging from abortion to transgender participation in sports to Steve Williams, the Democratic mayor of Huntington, West Virginia’s second-largest city.
Morrisey will be only the third Republican elected as governor of West Virginia for the first time since 1928. Outgoing two-term governor Jim Justice, now a Republican, was first elected as a Democrat in 2016. Months later, he switched parties at a rally for former governor US President Donald Trump.
Morrisey’s victory further cements the GOP’s ever-tightening hold on the mountain state, where Democrats ruled for decades.
Trump endorsed Morrisey, who has served as West Virginia’s attorney general since 2013 and used the high-profile litigation his office has taken on to make the case for why he was the best man for governor.
Since his election as attorney general in 2012, Morrisey, 56, has litigated against opioid manufacturers and distributors, generating about $1 billion to ease the crisis that has left 6,000 children in foster care in a state with around 1.8 million inhabitants live.
He defended a law banning transgender youth from participating in sports and a scholarship program passed by Republican lawmakers that would encourage parents to take their children out of conventional public school and enroll them in private education or home schooling.
Key to his candidacy was his role in defending a near-total abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in 2022 and in taking the court to restrict West Virginia residents’ access to abortion pills.
In a statement after a U.S. District Court judge blocked access to the pills in 2023, Morrisey vowed to “always stand strong for the lives of the unborn.”
Williams, a 60-year-old former state lawmaker, tried to argue that most voters thought the fresh abortion law was too restrictive.
Earlier this year, Williams collected thousands of signatures on a petition to urge lawmakers to vote to put abortion on voters’ ballots. The attempt was unsuccessful. Republicans have repeatedly rejected the idea of ​​putting an abortion rights measure before voters, which in West Virginia is a step only the legislature can take.
Morrisey previously ran for the US Senate in 2018, but lost to independent US Senator Joe Manchin, then a Democrat.
