Of the 17 West Virginia State Senate races to be decided Nov. 6, 16 are contested. The following is one of a series of stories brought to you by the MetroNews team in the run-up to Election Day.
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — State Senator Mike Woelfel has spent countless hours of his legal career preparing cases for trial but the last four years at the state capitol has necessitated a different kind of preparation.
“You better do your homework. You better work hard or you’re going to be embarrassed,” Woelfel, D-Cabell, told MetroNews. “I’ve learned that it’s really important to be independent and listen to all viewpoints before you take a position.”
Woelfel, 65, wants to continue to serve. He faces a challenge in the Nov. 6 General Election from Republican Larry Lunsford.
“I know I’ve got to work harder to try and least give my best efforts when it comes to solving complex problems that are not solved with a sound bite,” Woelfel said.
One of those complicated problems, arguably the largest complicated problem, that continues to face residents in the 5th Senatorial District, which covers Cabell County, including the City of Huntington along with Ceredo and Kenova in Wayne County, is the opioid epidemic. Woelfel and Lunsford have different views on how the issue should be addressed.
During a candidates meeting earlier this week, Woelfel said the state cannot arrest its way out of the crisis while Lunsford offered up an idea that he said would get more addicts help.
“People said that same old cliche, ‘We can’t arrested ourselves out of this,’ but I don’t think we can afford not to,” Lunsford told MetroNews. “We don’t enforce the laws equally. If you’re on drugs and you’re an addict you can walk freely down the streets of Huntington but they pull someone else over for running a stop sign.”
Lunsford said arresting abusers could help them.
“If you’re killing yourself with drugs–why can’t we charge somebody with attempted murder?”
He said the goal would be to get those addicts into treatment.
“My plan would be to pass a law and get it out there where we could get people off the streets and help them,” Lunsford said.
Woelfel, a former prosecutor, said he’s all for arresting drug kingpins and mid-level dealers but not addicts.
“For the addicts, there’s got to be prevention and there’s got to be rehabilitation because those folks live in our communities and they are going to continue to be our neighbors,” he said.
Woelfel said he hasn’t agreed with everything Huntington has done to respond to the opioid crisis. He said he’s concerned about the number of unregulated programs that operate out of dozens of homes in the city but he disagrees with Lunsford’s plan.
This is Lunsford’s first dive into politics. He’s done a little bit of everything from selling insurance, building houses, installing fiber optic cable to pastoring a couple of churches.
“I had my first job at age 10,” he said.
Lunsford, a 1989 graduate of West Virginia Tech, believes the state’s economy can get a leg up by further promoting tourism. A recent op-ed in the Herald-Dispatch focused on using sports as a tool to draw more people to the state.
He’s calling for more insurance experts to be part of the fix for the Public Employees Insurance Agency. Lunsford’s proposal is to offer PEIA to those state residents who get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. He said that would broaden the pool and lessen the cost. He said a surcharge could be used to further address the debt in the teachers retirement fund.
Woelfel’s vision for the future is a diversified economy.
“Through tourism, natural gas, light manufacturing and we need to make our community colleges affordable,” he said. “I am in support of natural gas. We need to get the right balance on severance with property and surface owners rights.”
Woelfel hasn’t been bashful about taking to the Senate floor and taking a position on certain issues. Sometimes his position is against what fellow Democrats would support. He said a lot about being a lawmaker is researching an issue as much as possible, speaking with the experts and going with your gut.
“There’s a lot of spontaneity and I like that. I never prepare la floor speech, ever. Once I have a feeling in my gut, an intuition or in my heart, usually. It’s fairly spontaneous,” he said.
Lunsford’s faith is a big part of his campaign. He has the words “Jesus First” on his campaign signs. He said he realizes that can rub some the wrong way but he believes it’s the only way to true victory.
“Jesus is the only thing that I know that’s free to the public. It’s free to the rich and the poor and the black and the white and everybody can have a little bit of it and it can change people’s lives. It changed mine,” he said.
Lunsford said he realizes taking on Woelfel, whom he likes, will be an uphill battle but he said he offers real change.
“I’ve had a couple of mutual friends who have said, ‘Hey, I’m voting for him,” and I said, ‘You gotta do what you’ve got to do.’ But at the end of the day somebody’s got to have a plan and if I tell you the plan is I’m to let keep going like it is–that’s not a plan,” Lunsford said.