Commentary
As attorney general of West Virginia, Patrick Morrisey has been a scourge of the administrative state, combatting what he perceives to be federal government overreach into the life and commerce of the Mountaineer State.
On April 4, Morrisey announced that he is joining a crowded field seeking the Republican nomination in West Virginia’s 2024 gubernatorial race.
During that speech, Morrisey emphasized his aims, should he be elected governor: to increase economic opportunity, expand school choice, and fight the “swamps” from Washington, D.C. to Charleston.
The attorney general also touched on his opposition to the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, his pro-life, and pro-Second Amendment stances, and his devotion to fighting the fentanyl epidemic that has ravaged the state. In a sign of the times, Morrisey elicited perhaps one of his biggest cheers from supporters when he asserted that “Men are biologically different from women. And I’m not afraid to say that.”
This Q&A, conducted by Ben Weingarten, is a follow-up to an interview conducted with the attorney general last December. Morrisey was asked about his motivations for seeking out the governorship, national implications to his race, his view of the indictment of President Donald Trump—which occurred on the day of the interview—and more.
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the interview, conducted by phone:
Ben Weingarten: What is your motivation for pursuing the governorship?
AG Patrick Morrisey: I think there’s an opportunity to really help West Virginia reach full potential. And looking at this opportunity, I’m the only proven conservative in the race, with a deep record of fighting and winning against the elites, defending our values, accomplishing big things. If people like the work that I do as attorney general, they’re really gonna love me as governor because we’re gonna bring the whole force of the executive branch of West Virginia to bear on the most difficult challenges faced in West Virginia and our country.... We [would] have the additional tools of governor that we’re gonna utilize to defend our values and to help improve the standard of living in our state, supercharge economic workforce growth, to grow our population, and to really be the foil against the woke left and the elites who’re coming against us.
BW: What do you see as the key pillars of your agenda?
PM: Well, right now, West Virginians are being ravaged by inflation, and we need to protect our jobs. We need to fight to put more money in people’s pockets. I mean, the value of money has declined because of this terrible inflation, and so it has to be a focus that West Virginians have a state government that’s looking out for them. And I think that means lowering taxes even more, reducing regulatory burdens. But then we [also] really have to focus on advancing education excellence.
So, I want to dramatically expand our school choice programs, because I think that that provides a huge opportunity for kids. Our kids are our future. And so education is to be a big part of it.
And then we have to get to work on workforce growth and growing our population. West Virginia right now is the lowest workforce participation rate in the nation. That has to change, and it has to change fast. One of the things that I’m eager to do is to convert a lot of the 65,000 job openings that are in place right now and get people employed in those jobs quickly. That’ll supercharge our economy, and then we could use those additional revenues to put more money back in people’s pockets, the folks that are struggling paycheck to paycheck.
BW: What do you see as the national implications, if any, to this gubernatorial race?
PM: I think running for governor, folks across the country and in West Virginia are going to know that there’s gonna be no one stronger to build these critical state coalitions that are gonna take on federal overreach and the woke ideas. West Virginia will have someone who can honestly say and demonstrate that woke ideas stop at the border. So I’m going to provide an example for the rest of the country about how to run the railroad, how to make sure that you can succeed and flourish in a state that values freedom and lower taxes and is very welcoming. This is what West Virginia is all about. And we need to message that. We also are going to make it clear that we’re not going to be listening to the political elites, we’re going to put the people first, and that means speaking out on issues. So West Virginia is going to have a very loud voice, we won’t shy away from the tough issues, we won’t go quietly into the night.
BW: We’re talking the day of the first of maybe several indictments to come against former President Trump, and there’s widely seen by millions of Americans to be a two-tier justice system in this country where if you hold the wrong views, you pay to the nth degree, and if you hold the right views, you’re protected. What ought red states do to confront it?
PM: Look... what’s going on right now in New York is a major travesty of the judicial system. It makes New York look like a banana republic. That’s utterly unacceptable, it’s a political prosecution. We know that the other side worries about winning debates, and they may not be able to win at the polling booth, so they’re going to resort to the political prosecutions of a lot of people on our side who are running for office. We have to make clear that that’s completely unacceptable, and that should be a position that unifies not only all Republicans, but Independents, and many Democrats as well. This is an abuse of power, and we need to say so, but I think the American public will be behind us.
BW: There’s been something of a censorship industrial complex that’s been imposed via federal authorities working hand-in-hand with Big Tech companies, academics, researchers, and the like. There also seems to be a similar burgeoning movement at the state level. Would you let any sort efforts like those stand in West Virginia, or will you combat them?
PM: Look, I think that we need to be very clear that this is an us-against-them scenario—that you have some people who are advancing woke ideas and they’ll stop at nothing to indoctrinate our children and to force their values upon us. We have to stand up and fight back against that, and when I see Big Tech, when I see people trying to tilt the playing field in favor of these woke ideas, people are gonna know that the West Virginia governor is standing up against that, and saying “No.” And so, I would be looking for any way to make sure that free speech is going to operate in West Virginia, but when people try to abuse the system, they’re gonna be called out for it.
From RealClearWire
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
