The budget dog bites back: Ousted House Finance chair spoils GOP vote in Wood County

Ousted House Finance Chair Vernon Criss appears to have handed his delegate seat off to a Democrat after launching a kamikaze-style write-in campaign in the GOP stronghold of Wood County. 

Democrat Dennis Rempel, a retired federal employee, defeated Republican nominee Charles Hartzog for the House District 12 race in Parkersburg. The victory is the first time Wood County has sent a Democrat to the statehouse since 2012. 

Rempel, a first-time candidate, is projected to beat Hartzog by 151 votes, according to Associated Press results as of Wednesday. The AP has not called the race, but shows 99% of the vote has been tallied. 

Both Rempel and Hartzog attribute the victory to Criss, R-Wood, launching a write-in campaign that garnered 261 votes. Libertarian Stephen Thomas Smith also pulled 215 votes. 

Both essentially watered down Hartzog’s base. 

Hartzog, a 24-year-old gas station clerk, beat Criss in the May primary after three super political action committees poured $145,000 into the race. Those super PACs — Sugar Maple PAC, the School Freedom Fund and Americans for Prosperity — are funded by out-of-state billionaires and are supportive of Gov. Patrick Morrisey. 

Criss drew the ire of the groups after he proposed legislation to cap payments from the Hope Scholarship, a program that uses taxpayer money for families to send their children to private schools or to home school them. 

He launched a write-in campaign in August, contending the closed Republican primaries had kept independent voters who would’ve supported him in the primary from showing up in May. 

Jason Huffman, executive director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia, said Criss’ write-in campaign was the deciding factor. 

“I think Republicans in that county can blame it all on Vernon Chris based on the amount of votes that probably would have gone to the Republican nominee if he had honored the will of the voters and decided not to run a foolish write-in campaign,” Huffman said. 

Criss, who headed up the power House Finance Committee and for a decade this go-around (he had a stint in the 1980s), garnered support from Republican mainstays, such as the state chamber of commerce and the West Virginia Home Builders Association for his long-shot write-in campaign. 

Criss ran a scorched earth campaign against Hartzog, from blocking campaign signs with his own to questioning if the nominee had a real girlfriend. He was accused of being a Morrisey toady and hinted at collusion with the super Pacs, which would be a violation of campaign finance law. 

Following the election, Criss purged most mentions of Hartzog from his campaign Facebook page. Criss could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning. 

Hartzog said other Wood County delegates who lost their seats in primary challenges didn’t react this way. 

“I can say it was deplorable,” Hartzog said. “I mean, it shouldn’t take a 24- year-old to tell a 72-year-old that he’s acting like a child. He lost the election. Scott Heckert moved on. Bill Anderson moved on. Why can’t Vernon? Because Vernon’s a child.” 

Hartzog threw a few elbows too.

For instance, he published a police blotter report from the local newspaper showing Criss’ wife had been charged with a DUI and obstructing an officer, both misdemeanors. The DUI was dismissed, but she pleaded guilty to the obstruction charge. 

The super PACs who had boosted Hartzog to a resounding victory in the primary didn’t show up in the general election. 

Huffman said for Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia, they had other races they needed to focus on, such as the close calls for Del. J.B. Akers, R-Kanawha, and Del. Margitta Mazzocchi, R-Boone. 

“You kind of have to make some trade-off decisions in terms of your resourcing, your time and bandwidth,” Huffman said. “And that one was not one that we considered to be hyper competitive in the general.” 

Hartzog said while the dispute between himself and Criss garnered some outsized attention, he believes that his political star is rising. 

“I defeated the House Finance chairman by a significant and wide margin. That was impressive as it is, and then I only lost by 151 votes out of 3,600,” he said. “That is a razor-thin margin. That is still impressive. I would say whenever l run again, I would hope that whoever runs against me takes that into consideration.” 

For his part, Rempel said he just focused on knocking on doors and talking to constituents. He focused his campaign on a winning issue for Democrats both statewide and nationally: affordability. 

“I tried to run a clean race, and there was a lot of discontent between a couple of them,” he said. “And you know, I just let that go.”