WHEELING – The former CEO of a global law firm based in Wheeling is running for Congress.
Ralph Baxter, former chairman and CEO of Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe, will formally announce his candidacy at noon Sept. 12 in front of the firm’s operations center in Wheeling. An Ohio County native, Baxter was behind the firm’s move from San Francisco to Wheeling in 2002.
Baxter, a Democrat, will challenge Republican Congressman David McKinley in the 2018 election.
“The vote David McKinley made on the American Health Care Act tells you all you need to know,” Baxter recently told MetroNews. “The consequence of that bill, had it gone into law, would have been to undermine our ability to deal with the opioid crisis.
“It would have undermined our ability in rural counties to have hospitals for the people, and it would have put hundreds of thousands of West Virginians out of the reach of health care.”
Baxter earned his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1974, his master’s degree in education from the Catholic University of America in 1970 and a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in 1968. He was Orrick’s CEO for 23 years before retiring in 2014.