FAIRMONT – Delegate Joey Garcia, D-Marion, announced on Tuesday that he is running to succeed Sen. Mike Caputo in the 13th Senate District in the 2024 election.
Garcia delivered his announcement downtown at Veterans Square, to a crowd of family, friends and other supporters. Among them were union and political leaders, his Monongalia County colleague Delegate John Williams, and former Delegates Charlene Marshall, Barbara Evans Fleischauer and Linda Longstreth, who is now a Marion County commissioner.
Caputo announced last week that he is not seeking reelection in 2024 and he provided the introduction for his hoped-for successor.
Caputo said he first met Garcia when Garcia worked for then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. “I’ve seen how he can get things done, and he can build relationships, and how he can just move legislation through the process.”
Garcia is a strong campaigner, Caputo said, and one of just a handful of Democrats – 12 – to win in 2022.
“He can work across the aisle,” Caputo said. “And I think that’s what most West Virginians want. … They just want us to get along. They just want us to try to work together. And they want us to do what’s best for West Virginia.”
In a kind of a passing of the baton, Caputo said, “He has my full, unwavering support in his next venture.”
Garcia parised Caputo’s leadership in the Legislature and in the community. “Mike has been a mentor to me,” he said.
Garcia was first elected in 2020 and reelected in 2022. He talked about how he approaches his work.
“It’s important that we vote our values, speak our values and live our values,” he said. Caputo told him to vote his conscience, as long as he can explain his vote to the people back home. Hearing from colleagues who vote for bills they hate because of leadership pressure is one of the most demoralizing problems at the Capitol.
“Civility is the lost art of politics,” he said. “I’m not afraid to talk to everybody, to work with everybody, and to make sure that we find bipartisan solutions for the problems that we face here in the state of West Virginia.”
He talked about some of the issues that concern him, including better higher education funding and dealing with mental health and substance abuse.
His 2022 slogan, he said, was “Stay, Rebuild and Succeed. … That still speaks to me.” Legislation should help keep West Virginians here and help those who’ve left to return. With that as the foundation, “the other issues kind of make themselves work out.”
Garcia was Tomblin’s deputy general legal counsel and director of Legislative Affairs from 2012-17. And, when Gov. Jim Justice was still a Democrat, served as Justice’s senior counsel for legislation and policy through October 2017. He is founder and managing partner of Garcia Law in Fairmont.
First elected to Marion County’s three-member 50th District, he now represents the single-member 76th District. The 13th Senate District spans the Mon-Marion I-79 corridor, and along with Caputo is represented by Sen. Mile Oliverio, R-Monongalia.
Email: dbeard@dominionpost.com
