West Virginia legislators have gathered this weekend to assess their policy priorities for the regular session that’s straight ahead while also taking votes on who their leaders will be.
Republicans came out of last month’s General Election with even more dominant majorities in the state Senate and House of Delegates.
The Senate now has 31 Republicans out of the 34 members after the election and then the switch of Senator Glenn Jeffries from Democrat to Republican. That’s way up from the prior 23-Republican majority.
The House will go into the next session with 88 Republican members out of the 100. That’s up from 78 Republicans.
The newly-shaped caucuses will meet behind closed doors for votes on who their leaders will be, a process that occurs every time there’s a new legislature.
Although each party in each chamber will decide their own nominees for leadership, nothing will be official until formal floor votes are taken at the start of the next session. Nevertheless, whoever comes out of the Republican caucuses as the leadership nominees will be the ones eventually selected
No major leadership shakeup seems likely in the Senate, where a challenge to President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, has already been withdrawn.
Senator Patricia Rucker, R-Jefferson, in late August had announced a challenge for the president’s role. But last month, Rucker said that although frustrations continue over some key issues, she would withdraw.
“At the time of my announcement to run, I believed that I had the votes needed to win,” she said in her withdrawal announcement. “Today, November 22nd, I no longer believe that to be true.”
There is still competition for the top leadership role on the House side, along with the likelihood of other leadership changes.
House Government Organization Committee Chairman Brandon Steele, R-Raleigh, announced a challenge to the current House Speaker, Roger Hanshaw, months ago and it is still on.
Hanshaw, R-Clay, has been speaker since 2018 and has said he intends to continue in that role.
If Steele were to win, it’s likely there would be a whole new set of leaders in the House, including committee chairs.
Meanwhile, Steele has continued to serve as House Government Organization chairman, which is part of Hanshaw’s leadership team, even while mounting the challenge. If Steele loses, it’s hard to see how he would retain that role.
Even if Hanshaw retains the speaker’s gavel, there could be other leadership changes. In particular, Majority Leader Amy Summers, R-Taylor, could depart that role and focus on other policy priorities, including expected legislation to reform the Department of Health and Human Resources. Summers has been majority leader alongside Hanshaw since 2018.
Possibilities for the new majority leader, according to delegates, include current Finance Chairman Eric Householder, R-Berkeley, and current Health Chairman Matthew Rohrbach, R-Cabell. But all of that remains fluid until the full caucus gets together to start sorting everything out.
Any of that shifting could cause a domino effect of other positions being filled.
Steele, speaking on “Radio Roundtable” on WJLS AM, addressed the many personnel changes at the Legislature, starting with sheer numbers.
“In the House we have 30 members coming in as brand new, and that is astonishing,” Steele said. “I think there’s an appetite on the part of those new members to see some legislation progress that maybe we’ve not had an opportunity to progress before.”
He noted that a general desire to cut taxes in West Virginia has not resulted in actual cuts over the past few years. “I think you’re going to see a boldness to try to pursue some of that,” Steele said. “There’s still a $1.8 billion surplus out there that begs the question, when are we going to return some of this to the taxpayer?
“I think if you look at the platform that a lot of people ran on, they’re not going to tolerate a disagreement between the House, the Senate and the governor — they’re going to expect a result. And I think that’s what the voters said by sending even larger majorities than were there before.”
Steele said he hopes policy goals can wind up uniting the caucus.
“It’s not just different views; it’s different personalities and different leadership styles that are clashing at the moment,” he said. “The last thing you want to see is your own caucus divided. What you’re hoping is you can have a leadership style that’s going to unify that and avoid those divisions.
“We’ve seen them in the past back in the ’90s and early 2000s with the Democratic supermajorities. Often the eight to 10 Republicans in the room would wind up being the votes that swayed legislation, where there was a split. People have prognosticated that the same thing is going to happen to us.”
With unity, Steele said, “there’s some great things we can achieve in terms of energy diversity, tax reform, budget reform, education reform, that I think by and large most Republicans agree on. And if we can get past disagreements, there’s a great opportunity to pass bold policy that the people expect from us.”
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Lawmakers gather to set policy priorities and begin selecting their leaders - West Virginia MetroNews
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