CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey easily won the West Virginia governor’s race Tuesday, using an endorsement from former U.S. President Donald Trump to catapult him to victory in the deep red state.
Morrisey emphasized his role as a “conservative fighter” in the courts on issues ranging from abortion to transgender participation in sports to best Steve Williams, the Democratic mayor of West Virginia’s second-largest city of Huntington.
Morrisey will become just the third Republican elected to a first gubernatorial term in West Virginia since 1928. Outgoing two-term governor Jim Justice, now a Republican, was first elected as a Democrat in 2016. He switched parties months later at a rally for former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Morrisey’s win further solidifies the GOP’s ever-tightening grip in the mountain state, where Democrats reigned for decades.
Trump-endorsed Morrisey, who has served as West Virginia’s Attorney General since 2013 and leveraged high-profile litigation taken on by his office to make the case for why he was the best man for governor.
Since he was elected Attorney General in 2012, Morrisey, 56, has led litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors netting around $1 billion to abate the crisis that has led to 6,000 children living in foster care in a state of around 1.8 million.
He defended a law preventing transgender youth from participating in sports and a scholarship program passed by the Republican lawmakers that would incentivize parents to pull their kids from traditional public school and enroll them in private education or homeschooling.
Key to his candidacy has been his role in defending a near-total ban on abortions passed by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2022 and going to court to restrict West Virginians’ access to abortion pills.
In a statement after a U.S. District Court judge blocked access to the pills in 2023, Morrisey vowed to “always stand strong for the life of the unborn.”
Williams, a 60-year-old former state lawmaker, tried to make the argument that most voters found the new abortion law too restrictive.
Earlier this year, Williams collected thousands of signatures on a petition to push lawmakers to vote to put abortion on the ballot for voters. The effort was unsuccessful. Republicans have repeatedly dismissed the idea of placing an abortion-rights measure before voters, which in West Virginia is a step only lawmakers can take.
Morrisey previously ran for U.S. Senate in 2018 but lost to Independent U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, then a Democrat.
Leah Willingham, The Associated Press