Transgender issues have become an unexpected flashpoint in West Virginia’s gubernatorial race, as Republicans seek to project themselves as more conservative than their rivals in the solidly red state in the crowded primary.
In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s primary, former Rep. Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), businessman Chris Miller and a PAC backing West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey released ads that peddled misinformation and concerns Republicans in the context of gender-affirming health care and health care are being exploited for transgender athletes.
A Advertisement dated March 28th Miller, who supports him, accuses Morrissey of profiting from the “trans agenda” as a former health care lobbyist in Washington. “His pronouns?” asks a narrator. “Money-grubbing liberal.” Another pro-Miller spot — funded by West Virginia Forward, the super PAC chaired by Miller’s father, Matt F. Miller — claims that Morrissey once lobbied for a pharmaceutical company that was “in helps turn boys into girls.”
A senior strategist for Morrisey’s campaign shrugged off the pro-Miller ads. “There were attacks. There were a lot of things that were based on falsehoods and just plain pathetic lies, so the campaign responded in kind, but that wasn’t the focus,” Jai Chabria said.
A Advertisement from Black Bear PACA pro-Morrisey group that has received huge donations from the conservative Club for Growth Action has accused Miller of protecting “them/them, not us” when he served on the board of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Another knocks Capito down for working to “protect woke advisors” and arguing, “Our next governor must keep the radical transgender agenda out of West Virginia.”
Miller’s campaign manager Evan Lee said in a statement that the car dealer planned to “defy the radical trans agenda” and called Miller a “businessman like President Trump.”
Capito’s campaign also ran ads Play out concerns about transgender athletes and has praised his efforts to ban puberty blockers for transgender children.
The number of attacks focused on transgender issues has puzzled some strategists.
“I think West Virginia voters are confused about the focus on transgender issues,” said Greg Thomas, a Republican strategist from the Mountain State. “I think it’s just something that got kind of out of control.”
Capito, Miller, Morrisey and West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner are the top four Candidates jostle for a replacement Outgoing Governor Jim Justice (R), who is aiming for the Senate to retire successfully Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.).
Conrad Lucas, former chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party, said it surprised “most people here” that transgender issues have become such a major issue.
“Jobs and the economy always come first in everything, but they are certainly not a differentiator. … I think that’s the differentiator,” he said.
A Emerson College Polling/The Hill Poll A report released Tuesday found that the top issue for Republican primary voters in West Virginia is the economy, followed by education, coal/energy, threats to democracy and immigration. Transgender rights did not make the top five.
When asked about their concerns about the cost of living, border security and transgender issues, about 8 in 10 West Virginia Republicans in the poll said they were “very concerned” about prices and the border, and 54 percent said the same about transgender people -Subjects.
But 20 percent said they were “not worried at all” about transgender issues, compared to three percent who said they were not worried about the border.
“It’s amazing how they’ve put this front and center,” Charleston-based political strategist Tom Susman said of the candidates’ efforts to cast each other as “weak” when it comes to policies affecting health care and participation restrict athletics for transgender people. “They really ran all the way to the right.”
Susman pointed to that poll and argued that while the results showed Republican concern, they did not indicate that Mountain State voters wanted to put transgender issues at the center of the race.
“It wasn’t really a problem in West Virginia” until campaigns started spending gigantic money and “talking about who is the least transgender of each of the candidates,” Susman said. “You would think there would be hordes of transgender people [people] attempted to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. It’s absurd.”
Thomas emphasized that West Virginia, one of the most conservative states The country has already banned gender-affirming health care for minors and passed a law banning transgender student-athletes from competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. However, the latter is involved in a court battle led by Morrissey brought before the Supreme Court twice. In March, the Justice Department signed a law banning non-binary gender designations on birth certificates.
“We did all of that,” Thomas said. “Why would you spend a million dollars on advertising to essentially figure out what could be done with a handful of Facebook groups across the state?”
West Virginia lawmakers have filed more than two dozen bills targeting LGBTQ people this year. according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), although only one of them, the birth certificate bill, was able to pass both chambers of the state’s GOP-dominated Legislature.
“This session was the worst legislative session I have ever had to work on,” said Ash Orr, a transgender and reproductive rights organizer in West Virginia. “But I try to remind myself and others to think about how far we’ve come.”
The winner of the May 14 Republican gubernatorial primary is expected to sail to the governor’s mansion in the fall against the only Democratic candidate, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams. Former President Trump, who is extremely popular in the state, is expected to easily win the presidential race.
But the state has just shifted has firmly established itself in the Conservative column in recent years. Democrats held a trifecta He ruled the state legislature and the governor’s mansion for nearly two decades before power shifted in the mid-2010s.
Orr said he feels the tide is turning once again, despite the outsized role transgender rights have played in the election campaign this year.
“I believe that these politicians use these extremist arguments because they know that they can distract in this way,” he said. “However, across West Virginia and other states, we are starting to see this begin to lose momentum. Even Republican voters who don’t support the LGBTQ+ community are tired of our policymakers using the same arguments over and over again and wasting our time and meetings on these issues.”
According to ACLU data, only 29 of the more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced by state lawmakers this year have become law, and nearly half — 244 and counting — were defeated before the end of the legislative session.
According to the latest Emerson poll, Morrisey is leading the Republican primary with 28 percent, although his support fell five percentage points between May and March. Capito’s support is up 11 points, putting him just behind Morrisey at 25 percent. That 3-point separation is within the survey’s margin of error.
Support for Miller and Warner rose slightly to 19 and 12 percent, respectively, and another 16 percent of primary voters are still undecided.
“There are essentially four Republican brands in play here, so it was always expected to be fiercely contested. And you have three very well-known, historic names in West Virginia running for the job, and you also have a very popular attorney general,” Lucas said.
Capito is the son by Senator Shelley Moore Capito and the grandson of the slow Governor Arch Moore, during Miller is the son by Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.) and the grandson of the slow Rep. Samuel Devine (R-Ohio). Warner’s brotherKris Warner, is a former state Republican chairman who is now vying to replace his brother as secretary of state.
“So what you’re seeing in the gubernatorial race is basically the field shifting as far to the right as possible to woo the MAGA, kind of like culture wars.” And so in some ways they’re outdoing themselves in that, who can be more right-leaning and more focused on such cultural issues,” said John Kilwein, chair of the political science department at West Virginia University.
Early voting in the race also suggests low voter turnout on Tuesday, despite the contested primary, it said local outlets. That “tends to mean the most partisan and conservative people” show up to vote, said Lucas, the former state GOP chairman.
“It definitely runs with a knife to the right. They all are,” Lucas said of the gubernatorial primary. “Everyone is showing their conservative beliefs, so it will largely come down to who West Virginians trust to be the real conservative, and we’ll see who that is on Tuesday.”
