Summary
Gov. Jim Justice switched parties shortly after taking office in 2017. Some Republicans are still skeptical, and Justice faces a primary challenge in 2020.
We think the race for governor in West Virginia leans toward the Republican candidate.
Politico 4/19/20
OnAir Post: 2020 Governor Election
Jim Justice
Current Position: Governor since 2015
Affiliation: Republican
Candidate: 2020 Governor
Gov. Justice is the largest farmer east of the Mississippi River. Before being elected governor, Jim was the president and CEO of 102 different companies. In 2009, Justice rescued The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, from bankruptcy.
In May 2015, Jim announced his campaign to seek the office of governor of West Virginia. After 19 months on the campaign trail sharing his vision for transforming West Virginia, Jim was elected the 36th governor of West Virginia. He won with a broad coalition of support from Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
For more information, visit Jim Justice’s page.
Ben Salango
Current Position: Kanawha County Commissioner/ Attorney
Affiliation: Democrat
Candidate: 2020 Governor
Ben Salango is a lifelong Democrat, raised in the heart of West Virginia. He is dedicated to moving West Virginia forward by prioritizing investments in public education, creating more jobs in the Mountain State, protecting health care, fixing the roads, and combating the opioid epidemic. Ben can be trusted to fight for West Virginia’s working families.
Ben has distinguished himself on the Kanawha County Commission as a forward thinker, always working to improve the lives of Kanawha County residents. He worked to create the Upper Kanawha Business Assistance Program (UKAN), a program dedicated to creating entrepreneurs in the Upper Kanawha Valley, a part of the state that has been heavily impacted by the loss of coal jobs. He fought to fully fund the Kanawha Senior Services program and guarantee that every senior citizen that requested meal services would be able to receive them.
For more information, visit Ben Salango’s post.
Issues
Governance
Jim Justice
N/A
Ban Salango
Ben Salango will return the power to the citizens of West Virginia and regain the public’s trust by rooting out corruption in government. He believes that state government must have stricter compliance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so the public can see exactly how our government is run.
West Virginians were outraged when Jim Justice made a secret tax deal for himself and his companies and again when he refused to put his assets into a blind trust. As governor, Ben will end secret tax deals and tax breaks for public officials and their companies. He will force state officials to place their corporate assets in a blind trust and will ensure that all candidates for office are current on their state or local taxes.
A Salango administration will increase the transparency of deals with foreign governments and corporations receiving assistance from the taxpayers of West Virginia. We shouldn’t be left in the dark when countries like China want to control our natural resources.
As a county commissioner, Ben understands the role local governments must play in economic development projects that involve state resources. He will make it a priority to involve local government in state decisions that impact a community. Ben believes that there should be approval by the relevant county commission of any state-funded development within the county to prevent a repeat of the flawed process we saw with Rockwool in Jefferson County.
Ethics Reform
Ben Salango is committed to strengthening and fully funding the State Ethics Commission to identify conflicts of interest. In order to ensure state leaders do the job they were elected to do, Salango will implement an online public calendar for the governor, board of public works, and all agency heads.
For more information visit post.
Civil Rights
Jim Justice
N/A
Ben Salango
Ben Salango is an avid outdoorsman, hunter, fisherman, hiker, and climber. He is a responsible gun owner and is pro-Second Amendment. He has had a concealed weapon permit for over a decade. Ben grew up hunting in the woods of southern West Virginia and understands the hunting tradition that is engrained in our culture. He believes that law-abiding gun owners should be protected from federal overreach. Ben believes that more focus should be placed on making West Virginia an outdoor tourist destination for hunters, fishermen, and outdoor enthusiasts.
Ben Salango fully supports the Second Amendment and has had his concealed weapons permit for over a decade.
He strongly supports the rights of West Virginians to defend themselves and their families. Ben learned to hunt in Southern West Virginia and has passed on his love of the outdoors to his sons. Gun owners can count on Ben Salango to protect the 2nd Amendment.
Economy
Jim Justice
Thanks to Governor Justice’s leadership, the state’s economy is strong and growing stronger every day. In the last year, over 20,000 news jobs were created in West Virginia, and total personal income for the state increased by $3 billion. The state’s unemployment rate hit the lowest in over a decade, and the state recently hit the highest level of employment in over a decade.Governor Justice has delivered on his promise of diversifying our economy and creating jobs. West Virginia welcomed job growth and expansion from large and small companies, including Hino Motors, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Facebook, MPLX, Pietro Fiorentini, Northrup Grumman, Proctor & Gamble, Pratt and Whitney, Hyperloop One, and Great Barrel Company to name a few.Working with his friend President Donald Trump, Governor Justice has worked to ensure our small businesses, entrepreneurs, and innovators have the investment, tools, and support they need to grow and hire more West Virginians. He will continue working with President Trump to encourage the location of more federal agencies and workers in the Mountain State.There are challenges ahead, and more work to do, and Governor Justice is focused every day on building on the successes he has achieved during his time in office.
Ben Salango
As a small business owner himself, Ben Salango understands how important small businesses are to West Virginia. He will help grow small businesses by adapting the successful formula he developed in Kanawha County that turned the unemployed into entrepreneurs.
Salango worked to create the Upper Kanawha Business Assistance Program (UKAN), a program dedicated to creating entrepreneurs in the Upper Kanawha Valley, a part of the state that has been heavily affected by the loss of coal jobs. UKAN is a loan forgiveness program aimed at helping small businesses expand, and Ben wants to bring it to communities across West Virginia when he’s governor.
Right now, West Virginia has a part-time governor who isn’t promoting the boundless possibilities the Mountain State has to offer. Ben Salango will market and sell West Virginia’s energy to the world. Has Jim Justice ever traveled to places like India to promote our coal or natural gas? The answer is no. Ben will be a governor who focuses on bringing in foreign investment to create West Virginia jobs.
The different regions of West Virginia present unique opportunities to attract business and create jobs. As governor, Ben Salango will work with local leaders across the state to create a long-term growth plan for each region.
He will strengthen our workforce by expanding skills training for in-demand fields. He will grow sports tourism for the whole state of West Virginia, just like he did with the Shawnee Sports Complex. Salango took a nine-hole golf course in Kanawha County that was losing money and turned it into a sports complex that brings in millions of dollars to the Kanawha Valley each year by hosting travel youth sporting events.
Access to broadband is essential for students, businesses, and anyone else trying to compete in the 21st century. As governor, Ben will expand broadband access across West Virginia. Whether you live at the head of a holler or in a downtown neighborhood, a Salango administration will fight to make sure you can access broadband.
There are too many college grads each year leaving West Virginia because we don’t have enough IT jobs available. Ben believes that expanding broadband will grow technology jobs across West Virginia.
Ben Salango wants to grow career opportunities across the state. What’s missing from West Virginia is that there aren’t enough good-paying jobs that allow people to provide for their families and retire with dignity. Ben’s vision is not just more jobs—it’s more opportunities for career advancement, to keep our young people here and our families together.
As governor, Ben Salango will make sure workers are prepared for in-demand fields. He will emphasize vocational and technical training for those who decide college isn’t for them.
Salango will work to pass legislation so that all state projects will use prevailing wage and give priority to West Virginia owned companies and West Virginia workers. As a Kanawha County Commissioner, Ben built the Shawnee Sports Complex using union labor. It was done on time and on budget.
Ben will implement paid family leave for West Virginia’s public employees, to mirror the new 12-week paid family leave policy at the federal level. It’s something he was able to accomplish in Kanawha County.
Education
Jim Justice
Governor Justice believes every child in West Virginia deserves the opportunity to receive not just a good but an excellent education. He made education our centerpiece by working with education leaders, teachers, and parents to improve public schools. He delivered record pay raises for West Virginia’s teachers and school service personnel.
Governor Justice knows that education reform focused on paying hard working teachers well, increasing student achievement, and empowering parents with options that are best for their children will mean greater opportunities for our children and grandchildren.
Ben Salango
WEST VIRGINIA EDUCATORS AND STUDENTS FIRST
Under a Salango administration, teachers and school service personnel will not have to strike to get what they deserve because Ben knows that the real road to prosperity in West Virginia is through the classroom. Ben believes that strong public schools make for a stronger West Virginia. He will give educators a raise in order to recruit and retain teachers and school service personnel. Ben will make sure educators are treated like the professionals they are so that our kids have access to the best and brightest teachers West Virginia has to offer. Ben supports tax incentives for public school employees.
He will fight for smaller class sizes and funding for full-time nurses and mental health counselors in every school. He will support trauma-informed training for all education professionals who find themselves on the front lines of the opioid epidemic.
In addition to teaching, our educators are expected to act as social workers. Salango believes that every school in West Virginia should have a dedicated social worker.
As governor, Ben will make West Virginia the strongest state in the country for vocational and job skills training. He wants training facilities across the state that can prepare students and out-of-work adults for new opportunities.
He will support a student loan reduction bill and a first-time homebuyer tax credit to incentivize people to stay in West Virginia. Ben wants to give students the ability to earn an associate degree when they graduate high school. He is committed to bringing school service personnel salaries over the poverty line.
Environment
Jim Justice
N/A
Ben Salango
Ben Salango believes that all West Virginians should have access to clean air, clear water, and that we need to protect West Virginia’s natural beauty.
As governor, Salango will protect the drinking water of West Virginians and preserve the Mountain State’s public waterways.
Ben’s Plan to Protect Our Water:
Hold corporations accountable and make them clean up their mess if they pollute our drinking water.
Support infrastructure projects to provide clean water in rural communities.
Increase transparency, testing, and reporting of water quality from state government.
Learn from the lessons of the 2014 water crisis by introducing recommendations from the WV Public Water System Supply Study Commission.
Create tax incentives for water clean up projects that benefit the public.
Build an emergency response task force to deal with water crises. Including a stockpile of bottled water.
Use C.A.R.E.S. Act money to repair crumbling infrastructure to bring back access to clean water.
Health Care
Jim Justice
N/A
Ben Salango
WEST VIRGINIA HEALTHCARE FIRST
Ben Salango will fight the escalating cost of healthcare because quality care should not be reserved exclusively for the wealthy few. He will make health care affordable and accessible and will protect the 800,000 West Virginians with pre-existing conditions. Ben will fight for a cap on monthly insulin co-pays and make prescription drugs affordable.
He will immediately eliminate the Intellectual/ Developmental Disabilities (IDD) waiver waitlist using surplus Medicaid funds. He will utilize tele-health technology to give rural communities better access to health care.
As governor, Salango will increase Medicaid reimbursements to prevent local rural hospitals and health care providers from going bankrupt.
He will strengthen healthcare protections to help consumers who are wrongly denied health insurance coverage.
As county commissioner, Salango passed a 12-week paid family leave policy for Kanawha County employees. He wants to do the same for public employees in West Virginia.
He will establish an application process to apportion any Medicaid surplus to locally-owned rural hospitals, health care providers, and clinics who are struggling to stay open.
Ben will break up the bureaucracy at DHHR so that health care can be more accessible and transparent to the people of West Virginia. As governor, he will make sure that insurance companies aren’t taking advantage of Mountain State families.
As West Virginia’s hospitals are rapidly closing and filing for bankruptcy, Jim Justice isn’t doing anything to reverse this trend.
Ben Salango will fight to guarantee access to healthcare for rural and underserved communities. Ben’s plan will save our rural hospitals, protect healthcare jobs, and ensure that West Virginians have access to affordable health care. He will step in to prevent these hospital closures before they happen.
Instead of corporate giveaways eliminating the inventory tax ($100 million), or eliminating personal property tax ($200 million), or creating an intermediate appellate court ($6.5 million), Salango believes that it’s time to protect patients and jobs.
The Salango Plan:
There will be a lifeline for any rural hospital that plans to cease operations (OVMC, Fairmont Regional Medical Center, etc). Salango will stop closures before they happen.
Using the Pennsylvania Rural Health Model as a blueprint, Ben Salango will implement global budgets for struggling hospitals in West Virginia to ensure patients have access to high-quality care, while simultaneously reducing the cost of hospital expenditures.
For more information see post.
Infrastructure
Jim Justice
After years of neglect, Governor Jim Justice is making historic improvements to our highways and secondary roads. Over the last year, the Division of Highways completed a record-setting 27,000 miles of road paving and maintenance.
Governor Justice’s Roads to Prosperity Program has resulted in nearly $2 billion for construction and maintenance of highways and roads, including The Coalfields Expressway, the King Coal Highway, and the next phase of Corridor H. Other major highway work recently awarded, include road work on the I-70 Bridges Project in Wheeling, the I-64 Nitro/St. Albans Bridge, the U.S. 35 Project, and I-64 widening work.
Ben Salango
Right now, Jim Justice is concerned only with fixing the roads that will benefit his business interests. As governor, Ben Salango will upgrade roads and bridges across West Virginia. The Justice roads plan is nothing more than a band-aid on a bullet wound. Ben understands that we need a long-term plan to fix our roads in every corner of our state and that patchwork projects won’t get it done. He will make sure district managers fully implement the Highway Operations Core Maintenance plans and complete the necessary follow up work. He will also raise pay for DOH workers.
With Ben Salango as governor, fixing our roads will be a year-round priority and not just a campaign-season talking point. West Virginia taxpayers have watched Justice mismanage road funding and borrow money to keep up with routine maintenance. As governor, Ben will make sure West Virginia road projects are done with West Virginia workers.
Safety
Jim Justice
Drug Abuse & Addiction
Governor Justice addressed the drug abuse crisis with a three-pronged attack: go after the drug runners, offer addicts a way out, and create jobs to solve the core problem. He created the West Virginia Narcotics Intelligence Unit to use state-of-the-art data analytics, forensic accounting, and support to every West Virginia law enforcement agency to crack down on drug trafficking activity.
Governor Justice created the Jobs & Hope Program to help combat the state’s drug crisis by offering free addiction treatment while, at the same time, offering free career and technical education. This effort has been an enormous success. Over 1,200 West Virginians have been referred to the program, and people are graduating with skills and training for exciting new careers.
Ben Salango
Ben will protect West Virginia’s first responders, including: law enforcement, firefighters, EMTs, and everyone who keeps our communities safe day in and day out. As governor, Ben will encourage legislation to have 911 telecommunicators classified as first responders, will expand mental health and substance abuse counseling for all first responders, and will encourage the creation of wellness centers specifically for first responders.
Taking care of the families of fallen law enforcement, firefighters, and first responders must be a top priority. Ben’s plan will increase the one-time death benefit to the families of law enforcement, firefighters (professional and volunteer), and first responders killed in the line of duty to $250,000. He will focus on the recruitment and retention of professional and volunteer firefighters across West Virginia.
Salango has been endorsed by both the Charleston Professional Firefighters and South Charleston Professional Firefighters.
WEST VIRGINIA CRIME VICTIMS FIRST
Ben Salango will support families who have had their world turned upside down by violent crime. He will expand services under the Crime Victim’s Rights Fund to deliver justice for families touched by violent crimes. He will broaden the scope of coverage to pay for funeral services for victims of violent crimes to ensure a proper burial.
Salango will institute a process where the families of violent crime victims are notified when the criminal defendant seeks a pardon.
For more information see post.
Seniors
Jim Justice
N/A
Ben Salango
Our seniors have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even in the best of times, we have a duty to protect West Virginia’s most vulnerable, but certainly we must take additional measures to ensure that our elderly population is healthy and safe.
As Kanawha County Commissioner, Ben worked to test every nursing home resident and the staff. He also cleared the waitlist for seniors in need of a home-delivered meal.
As Governor, Salango Will:
Ensure the safety of seniors in nursing homes during COVID-19 and every day.
Expand vigilant testing in our nursing homes and senior centers.
Provide adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to all residents, staff, and visitors.
Establish a tip line to enable residents, their families, and care providers to anonymously call in violations at senior living facilities.
Make sure no senior goes hungry
Clear the waitlist for West Virginia seniors in need of a hot meal.
Update home-delivery vehicles for each county.
Secure funds for senior centers and meal programs.
Cut healthcare costs and ensure access to quality healthcare for seniors
Ensure all seniors can get home care to live with dignity in their communities.
Expand programs aimed at preventing disease and incentivizing healthy living.
Enable seniors to seek the care they need from the providers they trust.
Keep rural hospitals open. (see rural hospital protection plan here).
Build small-format hospitals (25 beds) in rural communities so seniors don’t have to travel far for care.
Support seniors, who want to, age in place
For more information see post.
Veterans
Jim Justice
N/A
Ben Salango
West Virginia’s veterans have sacrificed for us and we should have their backs when they return home.
Ben will work to ensure that no veteran is homeless. He will expand substance abuse and mental health counseling. A Salango administration will provide career and vocational training for unemployed veterans and for veterans looking to change careers.
As governor, Ben will establish a business start-up assistance program for veterans who want to start their own businesses — similar to the UKAN program he spearheaded as Kanawha County commissioner. In addition, Ben will give priority to in-state contracts to businesses owned by local veterans. He will give veterans a leg up when they apply for state jobs.
