Flood debris from Little Wheeling Creek is seen along National Road, in the Valley Grove area of Ohio County, W.Va., east of Wheeling, on Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Flood debris from Little Wheeling Creek is seen along National Road, in the Valley Grove area of Ohio County, W.Va., east of Wheeling, on Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Gov. Patrick Morrisey didn’t grow up in these hills. He wasn't on the picket lines with us. He never saw a classroom full of hungry kids and knew that school lunch was their only meal of the day. He didn’t dig out neighbors after floods or stand beside families when a shuttered factory wiped out a whole town’s future.
So with all due respect, Morrisey shouldn't dare tell us what West Virginia values are.
Morrisey wasn’t born here. He didn’t come up through our struggles. His roots are in New Jersey pavement, not West Virginia soil. He didn’t earn his place here; he bought into it. After getting laughed out of New Jersey politics, Morrisey and his wife cashed in as lobbyists for Big Pharma. And then Morrisey used that blood money to buy his way into office here, hoping we wouldn’t remember where he came from or who he served. But we do remember. And we see through him.
Real West Virginians don’t measure success in campaign checks or TV ads. We measure it in scraped knuckles, calloused hands and the strength to keep going when everything’s been taken from us.
Our values aren’t slogans. They’re lived every day. They show up when neighbors share food because the pantry’s empty, when volunteers clean out mud-soaked homes while the government drags its feet, when teachers strike not just for themselves but for the futures of their students, when grandparents raise grandbabies without complaint. When coal miners hold the line against out-of-state suits who see us as expendable, that’s who we are.
But Morrisey has chosen a different path. He doesn’t listen to working people, but instead to the rich, to the think tanks and out-of-state donors who bankroll his ambitions while gutting the services we rely on. Morrisey knows the champagne crowd, not the folks lining up at food pantries. He knows lobbyists, not the single mom praying her kid doesn’t get sick because she lost her insurance. Morrisey has consistently supported tax cuts for the wealthy while our infrastructure crumbles and our schools struggle.
Morrisey doesn’t speak for us. He speaks for them.
And now he's asking those same outsiders, the same suits and corporate strategists who’ve never stepped foot in Clay or Welch or Matewan unless it was for a photo op, to help Morrisey “fix†us as if we’re the problem. As if we haven’t been surviving everything thrown at us for generations. We don’t need saving from ourselves. We need to save ourselves from politicians who treat this state like a stepping stone.
Governor, we’re tired. Tired of the culture war distractions. Tired of the health care cuts and public school neglect. Tired of watching our neighbors struggle while the fat cats Morrisey serves drink champagne and buy another yacht.
This place doesn’t belong to political operatives or campaign donors. It belongs to the people who bled for it. Who stayed. Who sacrificed. Who survived. Morrisey don’t define West Virginia values; we do.
