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The 2026 primary election, by the numbers

The primary election is all but finished in West Virginia as we head into the weekend. All that's left is for the counties to canvass their results and send them to Charleston for their official certification next week. Let's start out by looking at some of the numbers from Tuesday night. According to the West Virginia Secretary of State's Office, 21 percent of West Virginia's registered voters took part in our state's primary election. It was the state's first election where voters were required to present a photo ID in order to cast their ballot. I would debate officials who say 21 ...

Reporter’s Notebook: To The Moon

If you're reading this today, I am in George Town, the capital city of the Cayman Islands in the middle of my third Royal Caribbean cruise. I'm writing this column before shipping off from Port Canaveral in Florida along the Space Coast, a short drive away from the launchpad where the Artemis 2 mission to orbit the moon took off. It seems every time I leave for my annual vacation, which sometimes is a cruise but usually is a week’s stay at my mother-in-law's timeshare in Kissimmee, I miss witnessing a rocket launch of some sort. These days, it's usually a SpaceX launch. In fact, ...

Reporter’s Notebook: The action of inaction

We can now put a bow on the now-completed 2026 regular session of the West Virginia Legislature now that Gov. Patrick Morrisey has acted on most of the 306 bills passed during the 60-day time period between Jan. 14 and March 14. Morrisey had 15 days, not counting Sundays, following the sine die adjournment of the Legislature at midnight March 14 to decide to sign bills, veto bills or let bills go into law without his signature. And that is exactly what he did with 10 bills, choosing not to sign or veto those bills. The question some have is why? You can make some assumptions about some ...

Hope floats in the West Virginia Legislature

Much as I predicted last week, the Hope Scholarship educational voucher program remains intact for the next fiscal year. Instead of recommending its first originating bill to reform the Hope program, the House Finance Committee recommended a new originating bill that only changed the payment frequency to Hope families from two times per year to four times. Some are saying the committee buckled under pressure from current home school and private school families. That’s a complete misunderstanding of what happened. The reason the first originating bill was drafted was to deal with ...

There are a lot of difficult changes ahead

Change can sometimes be one of the most difficult, and also most rewarding, experiences of our lives. Our area has experienced much change over the year. The loss of the steel industry is one such change which has affected us all in one way or another. What once was the lifeblood of the Upper Ohio Valley and much of the surrounding region has almost completely disappeared, resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs and an exodus of people from our communities. The effects are still being felt, even as there are those who continue to look for ways to build toward a new, and hopefully ...

Guest Column: Tri-share model not going to solve child care

With $5 million in West Virginia’s proposed budget earmarked for expansion of the Tri-Share child care program, it’s time for an honest conversation about whether this is truly the best path forward for our state. West Virginia is in the midst of a child care crisis. Families are struggling to find affordable, high-quality care. Providers are fighting to keep their doors open amid rising costs and workforce shortages. Employers are feeling the strain as workers leave jobs because they can’t secure reliable care. The need for action is urgent. But urgency does not justify ...