GOP candidates face off in lead-up to WV Gubernatorial primary

DANIELS, W.Va. (WVVA) - For more than an hour Tuesday night, the four top candidates seeking the GOP nomination in W.Va.’s race for the Governor’s office took questions on everything from the COVID-19 pandemic and teacher salaries, to an aging population and much more.

With a Raleigh County backdrop at Glade Springs Resort, however, voters also got the chance to hear what those vying for the Governor’s office say they’ll do to help Southern W.Va. if elected in November.

WVVA will be covering what was touched on during Tuesday’s debate in-depth in the coming days. To kick it off, we’ll take a look at what candidates had to say regarding the state’s economy. As a passionate topic of discussion, host Hoppy Kercheval asked “West Virginia has seen economic improvement in some areas over the last few years. But much of Southern WV has been left out of those gains...Give me something specific that if the government can change their lives, how the government would change their lives under you?”

The candidates replied in-part, as follows:

Chris Miller: “First thing we’re going to do is we’re going to get rid of the state income tax, and that’s going to put a lot of money back into people’s pockets. The second thing we’re going to do, is run state government more like a business. Because if I ran my businesses the way the government spends our tax dollars, I’d be broke.”

Mac Warner: “We’re going to fix education. We’re going to get WV off the bottom of the stack of states nationally....We have to have people reading at grade level by third grade or they fall further and further behind. So we’re going to fix that kind of education. We’re going to put money into early education, birth to three, then pre-k.”

Patrick Morrisey: “We have to make sure that we line up, for the public and the world to see, a list of all of our taxes, all of the regulations…and look at what’s going on in VA, MD, OH, PA…and then we need to compete in the economic arena and defeat them.”

Moore Capito: “School choice is one, lowering the personal income tax is certainly one, protecting your second amendment is a huge one, being a pro life state is a huge one. These cultural and fiscal issues that we got done in the legislature to put us on the right track.”

The economy was just one of many topics tackled in Tuesday night’s debate. WVVA will be taking a deeper dive into the event, as well as continuing to bring you more on the race for Governor of W.Va. as we move forward in the 2024 election cycle.

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