(Photo by Will Price/West Virginia Legislative Photography)
“It all comes down to turnout.” – Dave Weigel
Background
Regular Election: There is perhaps no contest on Tuesday that has attracted more attention than the Republican primary for State Senate District 17, at least in the regularly scheduled election. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent by Tom Takubo & co. and the Governor Morrisey/Randy Smith duo. Takubo is, in effect, the opposition leader in the Senate to Randy Smith, given how few Democrats there are in the chamber. Morrisey/Smith and their allies feel optimistic about Tuesday’s primaries in the State Senate and believe they are heading toward a clean sweep of winning every race. Given our polls last week, that may happen, but Takubo and the normative conservative faction of the West Virginia Republican Party aren’t letting up on trying to hold what territory they have and potentially gain ground. Both sides see this as an absolute bellwether for how Tuesday goes.
Takubo faces a primary challenge from lawyer and former Delegate Chris Pritt, who received 42% of the vote against former Delegate Eric Nelson in the open Republican primary for SD-17 in 2024. Pritt received little support in his bid against Nelson, who had the backing of much of the normative conservative “establishment” in Kanawha County. Nelson also benefited from then-gubernatorial candidate Moore Capito (son of US Senator Shelly Moore Capito) working on turning out his center-right voters in the county. This time around, Moore’s mother is on the ballot in an uncompetitive primary, and, as such, doesn’t have a field campaign that worked as hard as her son’s two years prior.
Special Election: Takubo and his allies were hoping for a competitive race in the concurrent special election primary in the 17th, but both our April survey and our latest show that Anne Charnock, who was appointed to this seat last year by the Governor, is virtually certain to beat restaurateur and businessman Michael Jarrouj. Since the April survey, the Mountaineer Freedom Alliance (a pro-Takubo faction group and a top spender) and their cohorts haven’t spent any dollars against Charnock / for Jarrouj, eliminating his path to victory. Takubo’s been heavily outspent in the final stretch of the campaign (compared to being the only one on the airwaves when we first polled the 17th), so his faction’s resources for the 17th have been largely directed to his highly competitive race since our last poll.
