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While the results remain unofficial until county commissioners begin their canvassing work, it looks like West Virginia’s voter turnout for the 2024 general election last week nearly broke the previous record.

According to the unofficial results from the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office, 760,273 voters out of the more than 1.2 million registered voters in the state cast ballots last Tuesday, or 62.84% of the electorate.

Compare that to 63.25% voter turnout for the 2020 election or 57.07% in the 2016 election. With that said, voter turnout in West Virginia will likely remain below the national average, which is more than 66%.

I’ve been a West Virginia political nerd since high school, coming of age in 2000 when Republican Gov. Cecil Underwood lost election to a second consecutive term, and Republican Shelley Moore Capito won election to the U.S. House of Representatives seat vacated by former Democratic U.S. Rep. Bob Wise (who defeated Underwood). So, I’ve been watching West Virginia politics for more than 25 years.

I say all of that to say this: I’m not surprised by the Republican domination of federal and statewide races. However, I am taken aback by just how large the margins were.

Keep in mind, in a 12-year period we’ve seen Republicans slowly take U.S. House and Senate seats. We’ve seen one Republican, Patrick Morrisey, take a Board of Public Works seat from an entrenched Democrat in 2012, then Republicans took four Board of Public Works seats in 2016, then a Republican, Riley Moore, defeated the lone remaining Democrat on the Board of Public Works. In 2012, we first saw Republicans take several seats in the House of Delegates. In 2014, Republicans took control of both legislative chambers.

Flash forward 12 years later. With Gov. Jim Justice’s election to the U.S. Senate, the entire congressional delegation is Republican, with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito on her way to a major Senate majority leadership position. Morrisey easily won his race for governor. All Republican candidates for Board of Public Works seats easily won and one candidate for State Treasurer, Department of Revenue Secretary Lary Pack, had no Democratic opposition on the ballot. And Democrats are now down from three to two seats in the state Senate and down from 11 to nine seats in the House of Delegates.

That’s not to mention the continued growth in Republican Party voter registration since the GOP took the majority in registration at the beginning of 2021. Just look at the margins of victory for the Republican statewide candidates. Some won with 40-point margins between themselves and their Democratic competitors.

I’m sure some Democratic or liberal/progressive activists are sharpening their knives for the state Democratic Party leadership and trying to determine what they did wrong. I could sit here and point out tactical errors by some candidates and their messaging, but I won’t. Honestly, I don’t think even the best messaging and tactics could have overcome this red wave.

Fact of the matter is that Democrats will not be in the minority more than 80 years as the Republicans were. Politics is cyclical and it is entirely possible the Democratic Party will one day start winning seats again. But it is going to take a while.

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Governor-elect Morrisey is now turning to the tough job of transition. He has created a 501(c)(4) to begin soliciting resumes from those interested in working for the incoming Morrisey administration. And Morrisey is planning a press conference Tuesday to provide more details about his transition plans.

Morrisey has a challenge and an opportunity that a governor hasn’t had since maybe Underwood, Wise and Joe Manchin. Morrisey can build administration staff and department and agency leadership teams entirely from scratch.

When former governor Manchin won the special election to the U.S. Senate seat in 2010 held by the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd and former Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin won the special election for governor a year later, much of Tomblin’s team were Manchin people or members of the Democratic machine at the time. Many of those same players were involved with Gov. Jim Justice when he won election in 2016 as a Democrat.

When Justice switched parties to Republican in 2017, some of those Manchin/Democratic machine people left. But some, such as former Manchin chief of staff Larry Puccio, still had sway even after Justice began switching out his leadership team and cabinet secretaries for Republicans. But state departments and agencies largely went on functioning as they had under prior governors. Even when the Legislature split the Department of Health and Human Resources into three, you really wouldn’t know that today based on how the split departments continue to operate.

No doubt Morrisey is going to pick administration officials who have a conservative public policy mindset similar to his. But he also has an opportunity to seek the best and the brightest. Morrisey campaigned on auditing and reviewing all executive branch agencies, their rules and regulations and making substantial changes to make the state competitive with neighboring states.

Changing the long-standing cultures of state departments and agencies can sound scary. But in many ways, our departments are more interested in protecting their kingdoms than changing for the better. As my fellow reporters can also attest to, these departments and agencies are absolutely hostile to public scrutiny, and that is not healthy.

Morrisey was elected by a large margin and so were other members of the Board of Public Works. Working with the Legislature, there may be an opportunity to break the paradigm for so many of the issues that plague this state. The question will be whether they change things for the better or for the worse.