CHARLESTON – This month’s election didn’t see a red wave nationally, but West Virginia is a different story.
And here, it wasn’t so much a red wave as a red tsunami.
When the state Legislature goes back into session in 2023, the state Senate will feature a 30-4 Republican majority. The House of Delegates will see an 88-12 GOP advantage. Republicans won 16 of the 17 state Senate races that were on the ballot, and the House advantage is the largest since it became a 100-member chamber in 1952.
Blair
With their already supermajorities turning into megamajorities, legislative GOP leadership hopes things don’t change much.
“It’s going to be somewhat business as usual,” Senate President Craig Blair (R-Berkeley) told The West Virginia Record. “We’re still going to have our morning meetings where we discuss bills for the day. We will make it so the entire caucus knows what’s moving through all of the committees. I don’t anticipate too much change from that standpoint.”
Blair did say it’s important to make sure the majority party doesn’t disrespect or disregard the minority party, noting it wasn’t too long ago that Senator Donna Boley was the lone Republican in the state Senate with 33 Democrats.
Remember, Democrats maintained majorities in both houses as recently as 2014.
“You have to make it collegial,” Blair said. “I think you can go back and see that we’ve been doing that.
“Of course, you’re always going to have factions. We had some disagreements within the party when we were working on redistricting and on abortion. I think we got the best results we could get. My members work well together.”
One political observer said the bigger majorities in both houses makes it a perfect time for leadership to pass even more reforms, especially actions regarding taxes and public education.
“It is essential for legislative leadership to have a plan and work together as a team to execute that plan,” Greg Thomas, a Republican political consultant who works with West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, told The Record. “If we’re not working together and toward the same end, we easily could end up getting distracted and wasting time.
“As long as the Republicans continue to pass meaningful legislation that improves the job climate in West Virginia, we’ll continue to hold these megamajorities.
“If we have infighting and don’t focus on these key issues, it will be very easy to slip back into the more narrow supermajorities.”
Thomas said he believes some legal and regulatory reforms that have been introduced and even discussed in previous sessions now will have a better chance of seeing passage.
“I’m talking about legal reforms such as medical monitoring, which has passed the state Senate three times but barely lost in House,” he said. “And another big priority for the legal reform community is going to be phantom damages. I think it’s something that had a good bit of support already. It’s been introduced before but not really debated. Now, it’s just such a priority.
“With this environment, the time is right. A big ticket item like that will move the state into a better place in terms of legal fairness.”
Thomas said the overwhelming Republican vote is a mandate for the state to enact center-right policies.
“It’s not a mandate to go off and pass far-right policies,” Thomas said. “There are some moderate initiatives that will get consideration. If you look at why we’ve been so successful in the past few cycles, it is center-right policies. That’s being conservative without being exclusionary.
“I think the leaders are ready. I think there will be fine-tuning of the process on the Senate side, and we’ll see more cooperation from the House. There are a lot of new voices. And as long as those voices are heard and they’re feel productive, we’re going to get a lot of stuff done.”
