We are more than three months away from the candidate filing period for the 2026 midterm elections.

All 100 members of the House of Delegates and 17 members of the 34-member state Senate will be up for election next year. Unfortunately for the West Virginia Democratic Party, most — if not all — of those elections will be settled during the party primaries on May 12 and the early voting period that proceeds that.

Republicans control supermajorities in both bodies, with 91 Republicans in the House and 32 Republicans in the Senate. That’s the peak of GOP legislative control at the moment, so the 2026 elections will determine whether they add to their supermajority control or if voters begin slowly sending Democratic candidates back to the Legislature.

While the filing period for incumbents and new candidates doesn’t begin until Jan. 12, 2026, fundraising and candidate recruitment has long since begun, with new candidates becoming precandidates, allowing them to test the waters before formally filing.

As I said above, the real fight will be in the GOP primary, especially in the state Senate, which even for some long-time Republicans appears to have gone too far to the fringe. I’ve written about the divide between light-red senators and dark-red senators.

Light-red describes those senators who would have been considered your normal, conservative lawmakers prior to the era of President Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again movement. But today, the light-red senators are considered too moderate and, in some cases, Republicans in name only (RINO).

The dark-red describes those senators who have certainly gone to the far right on social issues and the culture war, while also willing to use the levers of big government in ways that would make a traditional small-government conservative blush. Consider the recent hard turn away from tort reform earlier this year which previously was the hallmark of the Senate Republican majority during the last half of the previous decade.

Many traditional Republicans and allies – such as tort reform organizations, industry groups, chambers of commerce, etc. — were not happy with the 2025 legislative session, where a block of GOP senators were introducing and passing bills making it easier to file lawsuits, creating an uncertain business climate, and spending so much time on areas that clear majorities of the public do not care about, such as messing with the state compulsory school-age vaccine law.

Recruitment of GOP primary opponents has been ongoing almost since the gavel came down on the 2025 session back in April, with the goal of getting well-liked community members to challenge some of the more far-right Republican Senate caucus members.

For example, state Sen. Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio, will be challenged by retired Wellsburg Eagle Manufacturing president/CEO Joseph Eddy in the 1st Senatorial District. In the 3rd District, state Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood, will be challenged by Del. Bob Fehrenbacher, R-Wood, a retired plant manager at Chemours Washington Works. The 6th District has Jeffrey Disibbio, president/CEO of the Chamber of Commerce of the Two Virginia’s in Bluefield challenging state Sen. Mark Maynard, R-Wayne.

In the 8th District, Kanawha County Commissioner Lance Wheeler will challenge state Sen. T. Kevan Bartlett, R-Kanawha, who was appointed by Gov. Patrick Morrisey earlier this year to fill the remainder of the term of now-State Auditor Mark Hunt. Fayetteville Dr. Michael Antolini, president of the West Virginia Osteopathic Medical Association, will challenge state Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, in the 9th District.

One of the main drivers of the recruitment effort is state Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, the former Senate majority leader who came in second last December in the race to succeed former Senate president Craig Blair. Takubo lost the president’s race to current Senate President Randy Smith, R-Preston.

These are going to be well-funded races led by candidates who have good reputations in their communities. But do these candidates have a chance?

They would have if the West Virginia Republican Executive Committee continued to allow unaffiliated voters to participate in the GOP Primary. But the state party voted at the beginning of 2024 to close their primary to unaffiliated — also called independent — voters beginning with the 2026 GOP primary.

That means only registered Republican voters can vote in next year’s primary. And turnout is going to likely favor the dark-red Senate candidates and incumbents. While Republican Party registration continues to grow in West Virginia and will likely accelerate leading up to the April 21, 2026, voter registration deadline for the primary, that’s still going to leave out a big chunk of voters.

According to August voter registration records, there were 300,320 voters who identified as “no party,” or more than 25% of all registered voters. Some of those voters may make the switch to Republican, but some won’t and those could be voters that become disenfranchised and choose to not vote in the November 2026 general election or choose to vote for the other party.

The West Virginia Republican Party still has time to reverse itself and allow unaffiliated voters to vote in the 2026 primary, though I don’t get the feeling they plan to go back. And instead of writing angry press releases about the Republicans blocking unaffiliated voters, the West Virginia Democratic Party should see this as a blessing and start working to woo those unaffiliated voters. Because at some point, Democratic candidates will start chipping away at the GOP supermajority numbers in the Legislature.

Until that day, continue to watch the infighting between the light-red and dark-red Republican lawmakers.

(Adams is the state government reporter for Ogden Newspapers. He can be contacted at sadams@newsandsentinel.com)