CHARLESTON, W.Va (WDTV) – Tuesday night in Charleston voters heard the GOP candidates for Governor in the State of West Virginia one final time before early voting begins Wednesday, May. 1.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who was not present in the previous GOP debate, got the ball rolling as he spoke about ending utility rate increases impacting West Virginia families.

“We need to build on fossil fuels and look at renewables that’s the best way we can renew that competition to get the lower electricity prices and I’m the only one on this stage with the ability to do that because we’ve been in the fight against the Biden administration as they’ve tried to put West Virginia out for pasture. I’ve been taking on the fight to protect our coal jobs, our gas jobs, and I’ve worked with President Trump to do the same.”

West Virginia faces many educational issues including attendance and safe school entrances. West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner leaned on his background as an educator to solve this problem if elected governor.

“The thing I hear about most when I go to the High Schools, and I’ve been to about 40 of them in the last few months, is that the retention and recruiting of teachers is a critical factor. They are having difficulty doing that because of things such as discipline in the classroom. Vaping continues to be a number one problem along with the truancy problem. I was over in Wayne County not long ago and about 1/4 of the students were in a truancy situation so we have to make education fun, we have to make it reliable that people want to come and get that education.”

Coming into Tuesday many people viewed Morrisey and Moore Capito in a dead heat. When asked about the idea for a future regional airport in the Charleston/Huntington area, the former state legislator expressed how greatly that would impact the state economy.

“If you talk to baby boomers it’s the greatest idea since sliced bread that we missed, you know at one time, but you know now we have to try to work with assets that we have in place but you know of course if we get to a point when it makes economic sense absolutely of course we’ll look at it.”

Chris Miller, who has based his campaign on being a political outside and businessman, expressed how having that background can cut utility costs.

“According to the Department of Energy we can produce more power through geothermal heat than Saudi Arabia can generate in BTUs and natural gas. That is an incredible set of resources and when you add that stuff up if we play our cards exactly the right way, we can leverage our resources to drive down the cost of power up to 70% and use that as the foundation for all of our economic growth and development.”

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