Listen to “Rupie’s Resolution Sparks Deeper Question” on Spreaker.
Dave Allen asked me to hang out for a bit last Friday on MetroNews Midday. Radio with Mr. Allen is always fun, so the invitation was my pleasure.
Coincidentally, that same time slot aligned with floor remarks in the Senate from Ohio County’s Laura Wakim Chapman. She shared her thoughts on Senate Joint Resolution 19 — a proposal that would require a governor to be born in West Virginia as a condition of eligibility.
Keep in mind, Senator Rupie Phillips, the sponsor of the resolution — now co-sponsored by Greenbrier County Senator Vince Deeds — said a day earlier on Talkline that he intends to modify it. His preferred change would drop the birth requirement and instead increase the current five-year residency requirement to 30 years.
Chapman either wasn’t aware of Phillips’ updated position or chose to focus on the original language. She made clear she’s not a fan of the idea, defending Governor Patrick Morrisey’s record while expressing disappointment in the resolution.
Phillips later rose to clarify his intent to amend the proposal.
Good idea or bad, the resolution has people talking.
Phillips later remarked on Midday that if his aim were to target Morrisey specifically, he would have pursued a recall mechanism rather than a residency change.
That raised a broader question: would today’s strained relationship — the lack of trust and lack of smooth coordination between the executive and legislative branches — exist if Morrisey had won a majority in the Republican gubernatorial primary? Probably not.
More Republicans voted for someone other than Morrisey than did Republicans who voted for him — 150,741 votes for other candidates compared to 75,148 for Morrisey. With no runoff, a 33 percent plurality secured the nomination.
Yes, Morrisey went on to win the general election with nearly 62 percent of the vote. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Republicans who opposed him in the primary embraced him later as much as they opposed the Democratic alternative. Factionalism was almost inevitable, and here we are.
Add to that the decision to close Republican primaries to independents — a move that can make plurality wins more likely — and the state’s preemptive ban on ranked-choice voting.
Meanwhile, Governor Morrisey has not hesitated to weigh in on primary contests rather than staying neutral to unify the party afterward. That’s within his rights, but it isn’t without political consequences.
Then there’s the frustration among some lawmakers over what they see as sleight-of-hand budgeting — asking for a 10 percent personal income tax cut while budgeting for only five, despite an existing trigger system already in law. Candidly, when Mr. Wilson and I spoke to Grover Norquist, the takeaway was: stay the course. It seemed more like Norquist was supportive of the current trigger mechanism than altering it.
Viewed in totality, it’s not surprising some legislators are receptive to Phillips’ resolution. They’re fed up.
But the deeper issue isn’t today’s tensions, it’s the longer-term questions SJR19 has surfaced.
For example: should West Virginia adopt primary runoffs to avoid plurality nominees? Are party primaries even necessary if conventions could select nominees? Wouldn’t that be a more equitable use of tax dollars, especially since independent voters are banned from the primary?
One social media follower raised an intriguing idea that rises to the top: the jungle primary.
A jungle primary, formally a nonpartisan blanket primary, places every candidate — Republican, Democrat, Independent — on the same ballot. Voters choose among all candidates at once.
If someone wins more than 50 percent, the race is over. If not, the top two finishers advance to a runoff, even if they’re from the same party.
The goal is to let voters, not parties, narrow the field and to push candidates to appeal to a broad electorate from day one.
Instead of the traditional primary-then-general sequence, a jungle primary starts with one large contest and only holds a second round if needed. More efficient and a more equitable use of tax dollars.
And don’t tell me this kind of election is unfair to Republicans – Louisiana used it since 1975 and it was used when Republicans began to take back the state in the early 90’s including winning the governor’s mansion various times in the last 45 years. It’s sad they are scrapping it now, but that’s more about control than anything else… same thinking that banned a rank choice system here.
West Virginia may be far from adopting such a system. But in a state with one dominant party and growing internal factions producing plurality primary winners, it may be time to at least examine alternatives including a simple runoff in party primaries.
Even if Phillips’ resolution dies in a Senate committee — some say the House would eagerly move it if given the chance — it has already sparked meaningful discussion. And there’s nothing wrong with that.