Why five first-time WV candidates decided to run for office

In May’s primary election, West Virginia voters will find many familiar names on the ballot, including incumbents seeking to keep their seats in the Legislature and lawmakers seeking to switch chambers. However, some people are running for office for the first time.

West Virginia Watch reached out to four Republican and four Democratic first-time candidates running for seats in the state Legislature to talk about their motivations and hopes. Suggestions about which candidates to interview came from Republican and Democratic party leaders. Not everyone we contacted responded or was available for an interview.

Here are the stories of five candidates we had the opportunity to interview.

A cancer survivor and teacher

Kim Hundley was first inspired to run for office when she participated in the West Virginia teachers strike in 2018.

“(I) definitely felt like we needed more teachers to run for office,” she said.

However, their children were still miniature at the time.

Now that they’re older, Hundley, a Democrat, is vying for a seat in the West Virginia Senate. Hundley said she has spent her career educating students about the need to vote and run for office. As she and her students watched the state and national news, she knew it was time to take her own advice.

“Somehow I realized that it’s one thing for me to say it, but another thing to do it to actually show them what they need to do,” Hundley said. “How can I expect them to engage publicly if they don’t see role models in their personal lives?”

Hundley, a breast cancer survivor, hopes to work on reducing health care costs for state employees. The West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency increased premiums for state employees by 14% in July, and rates are expected to rise augment again by 3% in July.

“It’s strange to say this next statement, but I’m glad I had (cancer) 10 years ago when PEIA was still healthy enough that the cancer didn’t ruin me financially,” she said. “If I were to be diagnosed today, I don’t know if I would be able to survive this diagnosis financially.”

With health care costs rising, Hundley said she has taken home less pay in the last two years than in previous years.

“I have several friends who are retired teachers who are struggling with health care,” she said. “It’s starting to get ugly and something needs to change.”

She is frustrated that the PEIA task force formed by former Gov. Jim Justice made recommendations for the agency that were never implemented.

“It’s getting worse and they keep putting Band-Aids on it,” Hundley said. “So I would say that’s a huge driving force.”

A retired doctor

Dr. Tony Dasaro has long been interested in politics, although his career running hospital medicine programs left him little time for anything else.

After his retirement last March, he became more involved in state politics. Dasaro began attending parliamentary sessions on subjects he knows a lot about. The discussions there left him confused.

“I really felt like there was some kind of disconnect between what people were saying during their campaign and their performance,” Dasaro said.

People don’t feel heard by their representatives, and that’s a legislator’s job, he said.

“You are supposed to represent your constituents and be their voice in government,” he said. “And I didn’t feel like that was happening.”

Dasaro, a Democrat, said he thought he wanted to get involved at a lower level but decided to run for a House seat at the suggestion of West Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Mike Pushkin.

The doctor said he would work to maintain the state’s strict school vaccination requirements. The state is currently one of the few states with laws that do not allow students to be exempt from requirements based on their religious or philosophical objections to vaccinations. Almost every legislative session in West Virginia includes bills that would loosen the state’s vaccination restrictions.

“The health benefits are just enormous,” he said of vaccinations. “If you look at a map, you see West Virginia with its (school) vaccination policy, and you look at surrounding states that are more lax. There are a whole bunch of cases around us, and yet we’ve gotten away relatively unscathed. We’ve been able to maintain our herd immunity. So I never really understood where the legislation came from.”

A restaurant owner and father from Fayetteville

Tristin Kinningham, the owner of Kobe Asian Fusion in Fayetteville, said he never thought he would run for office but he was tired of complaining about state and national events.

“Why don’t I try to fix something?” he thought. “Why am I not the change I want to see?”

At this point, no other Democrats have been registered to represent his House district, he said. Since then, another Democrat has signed on.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was that a majority of our counties in West Virginia (at the time) were going to be governed unopposed,” he said. “If you believe the efforts of the people of Charleston, that’s no longer the case. I think almost every single race in the House and Senate now has multiple candidates.”

Democrats are significantly outnumbered in the West Virginia legislature. There were 49 unopposed races in the 2024 election – mostly with Republican candidates. This year, however Democratic surge has filed to run for seats in the House of Representatives and Senate.

Kinningham said he knows it will be hard to win the election as a Democrat in a deep red state like West Virginia. The winner of the Democratic primary will face an incumbent Republican in the general election.

As a father, Kinningham said his biggest focus as a legislator will be the education system. Something needs to be done to improve funding for public schools, he said.

“I don’t know how we’re going to properly fund our schools. I’ll have to work with other people on that,” he said. “But if, as you know, 20 students leave a rural public school to go to a private school, that school will lose a significant portion of its already underfunded budget.”

An attorney from Elkins

Elkins attorney Les Mallow is running for a House seat as a Republican.

“I am running because I believe in service and contributing to the place my wife Madison and I call home here in Randolph County,” Mallow said.

He said his family also has deep roots in Pendleton County, which also makes up House District 67, where he is running.

“I am passionate about ensuring that future generations can build strong lives here in West Virginia,” he said.

If elected, Mallow said he wants to lend a hand support miniature business owners and the economy. The current heads of state have made significant progress so far, he said.

He said he would also support forceful schools.

“(Supporting strong schools) means caring for the well-being of children, providing quality instruction and preparing this generation for the future, in addition to good-paying jobs for teachers, administrators and staff,” he said.

Special education teacher and coach

For Shane Woodrum, he watched a video of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting and Kill intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year was the catalyst that led him to run for office.

“I think it was more or less the case that you couldn’t get a straight answer from anyone in the national spotlight in government,” Woodrum said. “You went back and forth, back and forth.

“From what I saw on the video. I mean, he had just pulled out a phone, they tackled him and held him down, and one just pulled out a gun and started shooting at him,” Woodrum said. “That really threw me off. This is something you see in other countries, not in the United States.”

Woodrum is a special education teacher in Kanawha County and a former Child Protective Services employee. He coaches Little League and girls high school basketball. The Democrat is seeking a seat in the House of Representatives.

Woodrum, who served in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan during the War on Terror, said he was tired of government overreach.

“As a veteran, running for office seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” he said. “…I talk about over-engineering government all the time because that’s a big deal to me.”

As a lawmaker, Woodrum said he hopes to work to find a indefinite funding source for the West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency, which has increased rates for state employees in recent years as health care costs have risen.

“I really want to fix PEIA,” he said. “That’s one of the big things for me as well as an educator and working in the public school system, and as a public employee in general, PEIA is funded annually. We have to fix that. That has to change.”