Of the 17 West Virginia State Senate races to be decided Nov. 6, 16 are contested. The following is part of a series of stories brought to you by the MetroNews team.
RIPLEY, W.Va. — No matter which of the three candidates win in the Senate District 4 contest in November, its residents will be represented by someone relatively fresh to politics.
Republican Eric Tarr and independent Amy Nichole Grady are running for public office for the first time. As for Democratic candidate Brian Prim, this is his second time running for the state Senate; he unsuccessfully challenged Senate President Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, in the 2016 election.
“This is the most important election that we’ve had in some time for a lot of people,” Prim said. “Especially for state workers and for the education system.”
The winner in the contest will succeed Sen. Mark Drennan, R-Putnam, who was appointed in September 2017 to replace Mike Hall, who now serves as chief of staff to Gov. Jim Justice.
Tarr beat Drennan in the Republican primary election.
“I have a 22-year-old who is now living in Ohio,” Tarr told MetroNews. “We have a very narrow window of job openings here in West Virginia that are mostly around the energy sector or around construction. While we have a lot of job openings, we don’t have a really wide breadth of occupations to come into like what a lot of our bordering states offer.”
Unlike the other Senate contests, this is the only race with three candidates; Grady, a teacher at Leon Elementary School in Leon, threw her hat into the ring in the wake of the statewide teachers’ strike earlier this year.
“I was talking to people not only from my county and friends that are teachers, but friends in other counties. What I kept hearing was that we need more representatives in our Legislature who actually have been behind the scenes at schools and can make decisions for public education based on what they’ve seen, not on what people tell them happens or what we need,” she said.
Senate District 4 includes Mason and Jackson counties in addition to parts of Roane and Putnam counties. According to the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, around 42 percent of registered voters in the district are Republicans, compared to 36 percent who are Democrats.
Prim and Grady said they know how to connect to voters across multiple parties; Prim, an attorney at a mesothelioma and asbestos law firm, said he has talked to residents who feel the current Legislature and the Justice administration are attacking “working people” with such actions as supporting tort reform and repealing the prevailing wage.
“The actions of the state government and really the PEIA board is really what got this triggered,” he said. “It’s brought people (together) politically that didn’t support me before, and that was because a lot of people don’t pay a lot of attention like they should to the individual candidates in the state race and they let national politics come in.”
“It’s so much easier this time to talk to the people when I campaign because a majority of the folks who are fired up — being public education, service personnel folks — spent several days in Charleston and have their eyes open to how this is currently being handled,” he also said.
Grady recalled speaking to lawmakers at the state Capitol during the work stoppage, including Carmichael, whom she described as “very open” in private conversations.
“It just seemed we got mixed feelings because we got one thing behind closed doors and another we could see out on the floor,” she said. “He didn’t have a good reputation with our group of teachers and everybody else.”
Grady said when she is on the campaign trail, there is a common theme about supporting teachers and state employees and the need for that representation in government.
“We need a fix for PEIA,” she said. “I am a policyholder, so it personally affects me and my family if that doesn’t get funded or fixed.”
Tarr, a physical therapist and small business owner, pointed to the success of the privatization of Workers’ Compensation as a possible solution to fixing the state’s insurance program. He also suggested allowing insurance coverage to cross state lines.
“PEIA has been a political football for years. If you wanted to kill a bill, all you had to do was attach something with PEIA. The result of that is there is something always touching PEIA,” he said. “If you’re a recipient of PEIA and that’s your family’s health care, you’re constantly wondering how your health care is changing every legislative session.”
Tarr added a solution for one program is not going to be universal, but lawmakers should look at past successes in finding a fix that works.
“Insurance is complicated and that makes it politically difficult at times,” he said. “If you want to make something challenging at the Legislature, just complicate it a little bit. If you complicate the description of it a little bit, you can create havoc around it.”
Tarr said his campaign is based on building an economy for West Virginia’s future; he mentioned eliminating the state’s equipment and inventory tax “to help facilitate manufacturing,” lowering energy prices, funding infrastructure projects and increasing opportunities in education and career development as ways to foster economic growth.
“What we tend to do in West Virginia is say, ‘Hey, look at West Virginia and tell us what you need.’ That’s not the way business works,” he said. “You look at areas and you look at an inventory of demographics and infrastructure that supports your business model.”
Tarr also said the state should approach industries about how West Virginia is better for business development compared to other parts of the country.
As for Prim, he said education is the top priority for many voters this year, and it is not just in regards to salaries and insurance coverage.
“Schools should be fully funded. They should have all the teachers necessary. Yes, teachers should be paid more if possible, but we need to have enough teachers and not have to shortchange students in some counties because we don’t have enough people,” he said.
“The folks that are here to create business — their upper management — won’t come to an area if their schools are going to be deficient because they don’t want their children to go to schools where they’re not going to be prepared for their future.”
Grady said while PEIA is “number one on my list” of issues, education as a whole drives her campaign.
“We have a lot of people who are making decisions who don’t have investment in public education. They don’t have children in public education. They’ve never been in public education. They’ve definitely never been there,” she said. “In order to understand what we need in the classrooms and in our schools, you actually have to see it from the inside.”
Grady said her independent bid comes after missing the filing date to run with a party, yet she does not think it will hurt her chances on Nov. 6.
“As an independent, you have a little bit longer to get to file, but you also have to collect signatures from voters in your district, which is a little bit harder than just writing a check,” she said.
Prim said teachers and school service personnel have had their voices heard once this year, and he expects the same will happen on Election Day.
“They won the first little battle, and the only way they’re going to win the war is vote this November and elect folks who are going to represent their interests. If the current majority party stays in, it’s going to be a long, sad time for public education in this state,” he said.
Tarr said if the state wants to improve itself and get the attention of the business sector, it will take a multi-pronged approach. He stressed his ownership in 10 businesses and his success as a business owner as what he can to bring to Charleston.
“From building businesses over the past 20 years in West Virginia, I know the challenges we have. I know the kind of battle it takes to create a business that can employ people, and there’s a lot of changes we can make to improve that kind of thing,” he said.
“It’s simple, but you’ve got to have somebody who’s willing to do it.”
