It’s official (again): there’s a West Virginia Freedom Caucus in the West Virginia legislature.
Last year, a disorganized group of legislators led by Delegate Elías Coop-González attempted to establish a West Virginia Freedom Caucus. With Coop-González not running for re-election, the website coincidentally rebranded itself as the “Faith & Family Caucus” immediately after we linked it to an article detailing the civil war within the West Virginia legislature between standard conservatives and hardline conservative ideologues. Leadership in the successor to last cycle’s attempt at a Freedom Caucus includes Delegate Jim Butler as Chair, Senator Patricia Rucker as Vice Chair, Delegate David Green as Secretary, and Delegate Bryan Ward as Treasurer.
However, they are not seen as the true successors of 2024’s haphazard West Virginia Freedom Caucus. That is the new, official West Virginia Freedom Caucus, part of the State Freedom Caucus Network. The chapter is led by Delegate Chris Anders, an electoral underperformer and, according to2025 W-NOMINATE analysis using LegiScan data, was the most conservative legislator that year in the West Virginia House of Delegates. Anders was a member of the Freedom Caucus in 2024, and typically when running W-NOMINATE roll call vote analysis in states with a Freedom Caucus, leadership of Freedom Caucuses can be identified by a small cluster of 1-4 very conservative legislators who vote closely together at the edge of the axes.
The West Virginia Freedom Caucus issued a press release on Thursday, February 12th, with an official member list, and the organization plans to assess which winners of the upcoming legislative primaries could be good additions to the caucus. The official list of members includes Anders, Delegates Laura Kimble and Henry Dillon, and Senators Chris Rose, Craig Hart, and Laura Chapman.
However, the State Freedom Caucus Network is notorious for hiding its actual membership lists in other states. Their homepage states that when clicking a state with a Freedom Caucus member, “Total representation may not be shown as some members are anonymous.” This is a tactic to keep their plans to take over state legislatures from the business-friendly, standard-bearer, and center-right Republicans covert until they are in a position to compete against leadership in roll-call votes and primaries, as was the case in Wyoming.
This year, the Freedom Caucus is not in a position to try and attack the “establishment” Republicans in the House as a fledgling chapter. Consolidation under a single arch-conservative banner will be their ultimate goal through this year and the next, organizing opposition to the Tom Tabukos and Roger Hanshaws of the state until they are ready to strike in 2028 by recruiting candidates in Republican primaries.
In other states, detractors of the Freedom Caucus allege that legislators in these chapters take marching orders from the national network, instructing their members how to vote on legislation, making them an organized and effective opposition to legislative leadership across multiple state legislative chambers. In all likelihood, this session and the next will see a deepening divide among West Virginia Republicans.
Once sine die arrives and all roll calls are tallied, State Navigate plans to use W-NOMINATE to update the likelihood of Freedom Caucus membership if the membership list provided by the West Virginia Freedom Caucus does not include anonymous members, as seen in other states. Until then, we’ve used 2025 session data; you can see Freedom Caucus or Likely Freedom Caucus members on our district summary pages.
