WV Dems to choose between Pushkin, Toriseva at Saturday organizational meeting

Members of the West Virginia State Democratic Executive Committee will meet Saturday in Charleston to elect a chair and other party leaders. 

Wheeling attorney Teresa Toriseva, currently the party’s first vice chair, announced earlier this week she’ll challenge Party Chair Mike Pushkin, a delegate representing Kanawha County, in the election for chair.

Sam Petsonk, a Charleston and Oak Hill attorney and the party’s second vice chairman, will run for first vice chair. Former state delegate Del. Cindy Lavender Bowe will run to be the party’s second vice chair. The three announced their candidacies in a joint statement sent by Toriseva’s law firm. 

“The public is demanding a reformed and revitalized Democratic Party, and the Party must satisfy those demands urgently,” the press release said. “It is not enough to fill Democratic candidate vacancies; the Democratic Party and its chair must work to support those candidates to victory, including raising sufficient  funds and ensuring transparency and collaboration. Under the current chair, the Democratic Party has lost seats in the West Virginia House and Senate. The Party must grow and be ready in November to gain seats in the Capitol.”

Reached Thursday, Pushkin, who’s been chair since 2022, said Toriseva and anyone else on the committee has the right to run for chair, but said the party has lots to be proud of over in recent the last few years. 

“I do think that we’ve had a lot of accomplishments to be proud of over the past few years, especially with organizing a lot of counties where there were no county committees,” Pushkin said. “And then, hosting these candidate recruitment calls that went on for nearly a year. These weekly candidate recruitment calls where we worked with these networks throughout the state to help identify great candidates up and down the ballot, and it worked.”

At least 125 Democrats signed up to run for a seat in the state Legislature this year, along with others who filed to run for federal and county-level seats.

The party recruited Democrats to run in red districts of the state, Pushkin said, and offered filing fee reimbursements for Democratic candidates running in an uncontested primary. 

“We’ve done a lot of new things over the past couple years, and it’s really paid off,” he said. 

Pushkin said according to the party’s review of voter turnout during the primary election, Democratic turnout exceeded 37% and was higher than Republican turnout in many counties.

Pushkin pointed to the election of Del. Bill Flanigan, R-Ohio, and retired circuit judge H.L. Kirkpatrick to the state Supreme Court as accomplishments. The Supreme Court race is nonpartisan, but Flanigan and Kirkpatrick won over the candidates that Gov. Patrick Morrisey appointed to the court. 

“These were the choices that many folks in the Democratic Party had, and also our friends in labor were also supporting them as well,” Pushkin said. “So these are the people that we voted for, and I think they know, if you ask them, they know it was Democratic turnout that put them in those seats.”

He also pointed to the election of Jim Douglas to the Intermediate Court of Appeals. 

“The results (of higher Democratic turnout) speak for itself,” he said. “We flipped the Supreme Court. We now have a three-two majority on the Supreme Court, and we elected Jim Douglas, who’s a registered Democrat, who ran on being pro-choice and pro-vaccine. We elected him to the Intermediate Court of Appeals, and that race wasn’t even close.”

Toriseva, a candidate for state attorney general during the 2024 election, did not respond to a message seeking comment Thursday. 

Pushkin said he has no problem being open and transparent about the party election, but ultimately the chair will be decided by a finite number of people – 85 members if they all attend the meeting. 

“It is kind of odd for this to be played out on social media and in the press when, really, this is a decision of the executive committee,” he said. “But I have no problem. I think it’s a good opportunity to get out here and talk about the progress that we’ve made and the accomplishments that we should be proud of.”

The Democrats’ meeting is scheduled for 3 p.m. Saturday at the West Virginia School Service Personnel Association in Charleston. The meeting will be broadcast online at wvdemocrats.com/live.