MORGANTOWN — Republican gubernatorial candidate Rashida Yost made a campaign stop in Morgantown this week and talked to The Dominion Post about why she’s running and what positions she’s promoting.
Yost said she knows she’s not in the first tier of GOP name candidates: Moore Capito, J.B. McCuskey, Chris Miller, Patrick Morrisey and Mac Warner. Like her lesser-known GOP rivals, former Delegate Marshall Wilson and Terri Bradshaw, she needs to get her name out.
But she’s confident she can win support, she said. “I have been in the people community and the early childhood industry for over three decades.” She’s helped scores of people along the way and they will know her as she campaigns, she said.
Energetic and talkative, she said she never does anything halfway. “I go for the stars, I do not waste time. Being the governor, you have the loudest voice. And that loudest voice is desperately needed, especially for children and for families.”
Yost, 51, of Martinsburg, was born in Virginia, grew up in Singapore where she worked in child care and traveled across parts of Asia to teach and speak. After a divorce, she returned to Virginia. In 2015, she met her husband-to-be, a Berkeley Springs man, while working the registers at a gas station.
She moved to West Virginia in 2016. They married in 2019. Around that time she bought a failing daycare and turned it around. She owns Yost EduCare Corp. and Yost’s Infant & Early Development Center.
“I hit rock bottom. I roll up my sleeves and I work what I can,” she said. “The more I feel sorry for myself, the lower I will go. The more I prove myself to people of what I can do, I will go nowhere but up, up, up.”
Bills helping children and families would come first in her first week in office, she said.
One of her early priorities would be passing a bill to mandate that child care centers — with 13 or more children — incorporate phonics into their curriculum as part of their licensing approval, since reading skills are essential to success. Asked about mandating curriculum for private, for-profit businesses, she said, “I think we can actually work with the Legislature.”
Her Student Career Clock Hours program would offer a way to lower student debt and reduce college costs. It would allow students from second grade through high school to visit and eventually work at — a form of internship — places they might have a career interest in.
By developing a clear career choice, she said, they won’t need to waste money on unnecessary education — changing majors, dropping out, being stuck with debt. And with less financial risk before them, colleges could better control tuition costs. And the clock hours on the job site could help students secure scholarships and improve their chances of college acceptance.
“It’s lengthy but you’ve got to start somewhere,” she said.
She also proposes a state-funded Goals and Aspiration Grant. Businesses could apply for these grants and in turn offer to provide extracurricular activities for students to sign up for — ballet, music, and so on. This will provide the kids with meaningful activities and keep them out of trouble. And while the businesses would receive the grants to cover student tuition, they would still have to pay state and local business taxes, so the state would see some financial return on its investment.
Another plank in her platform would not involve making law but using the bully pulpit of the governor’s office. The state would encourage organizations and investment companies and private investors to establish pools of funds to buy land, build houses and offer them for sale for reasonable prices and mortgage payments.
Eligibility would be income-based, varying on local cost of living, she said and require holding a job for at least six months. The motivation of home ownership would help people live, work and stay here, and raise their families here.
“No plan is perfect,” she said, “but some plan is better than zero plan. Let’s do something different.”
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp
EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
