West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, the leading candidate in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Saturday that he is “the one proven conservative” in a field that features opponents from political families and dynasties.
Morrisey joined the program ahead of Tuesday’s GOP primary in the Mountain State, where several of his opponents hail from political families, including Chris Miller and Moore Capito. Miller is the son of U.S. Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV), while Capito’s mother is U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).
“We’re actually running against three political families and two political dynasties, and these folks just represent the swamp,” Morrisey told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle while laying out his campaign’s closing argument. “What we’ve been doing is we’ve been talking a lot about my record. I’m the one proven conservative with a record of getting big things done for our state. I’m an America First conservative; I’ve worked closely with President Trump.”
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Morrisey noted that he has long worked to champion the Trump agenda, adding Capito, a former state delegate, and Miller, a businessman, “weren’t really behind Trump.”
“In some cases, they were actively against Trump,” he stated. “And I think it’s important to have someone who’s going to be a strong conservative who’s gonna help lift our state up but also could be a conservative warrior against a lot of the far left and the woke nonsense coming out of Washington DC, whether it’s the mandatory electric vehicles, the rewrite of Title IX, to try to have men in women’s locker rooms, men in all sorts of safe spaces for women. That’s not acceptable, and you need someone who’s not going to flinch.”
“That’s my record, as attorney general: taking out the Green New Deal, taking out large policies on the left that’ll be very important for West Virginia into the future,” he added.
He later called Miller and his family the “ultimate insiders,” while contending both the Miller and Capito families are working to preserve “power.”
“We have one guy who’s a used car dealer, and he and his family have put in looks like it’s gonna be over $11 million before all is said and done,” Morrisey said of Miller. “And they’ve been the ultimate insiders getting a lot of the the government monies, the subsidies, and the PPP loans that they don’t pay back and it’s just, it’s terrible to see that because there are people that solely benefit off being close to the government. So he’s an insider, that’s the Miller guy.”
“And then you have the Capito guy who I think Don Jr. has called a RINO, and that’s the son of the U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito,” he continued. “And in fact, interestingly, the U.S. senator has transferred over a million dollars to the son’s super PAC and so you see these families that are trying to continue to hold on to power; they benefit with power, they benefit with perks, and I’m running against that.”
“It’s myself in a fight against all these political families who benefit from the swamp, and I’m trying to break the swamp, just like I did in the West Virginia EPA case, and just like I’ve done my whole career,” Morrisey emphasized.
Morrisey highlighted his extensive conservative record as the state’s attorney general, including combatting radical federal policies in collaboration with other conservative attorneys general, and laid out a clear vision for bringing his experience to the governorship, should he win the primary and general elections.
“I think we can all reach an agreement that Washington is broken, and also that too much power has been shipped off to DC – too much money, too much power. So in their lies, states [are] the only solution to fix the problems that ail us and that means that states have to stand up and say no to the federal juggernaut,” Morrisey said. “They need to say no to the regulatory power, and I’ve been working on that, obviously the big West Virginia EPA case and taking on federal agencies when they cross the line. But the states also need to say no, in terms of the financial resources as well.”
“So what I’m trying to do as governor is build upon the strength that I’ve showed as Attorney General where we used to organize 15, 20, 25 states; they’d come together on legal issues against the swamp,” he continued. “As Governor, you have the ability to not only help direct on legal issues, but you can direct on financial, on economics, on policy, on PR…all across the board, and that means you can bring governors and state agencies and treasurers and all sorts of folks together really to be that bulwark against the federal government, and that’s badly needed. And that’s the kind of change that I’m going to deliver.”
He noted he thinks his vision is “consistent with President Trump’s America First agenda” adding he is “looking to make sure that the states are responsibly casting the power that President Trump is trying to send back to them.”
The latest poll, published by Emerson College and sponsored by the Hill, found Morrisey leading by three points. He garnered 28 percent, Capito followed at 25 percent, and Miller registered at 19 percent. Secretary of State Mac Warner took 12 percent, and 16 percent were undecided.
The poll sampled 558 GOP primary voters in West Virginia from May 2-5. The margin of error was ± 4.1 percent.