dbeard@dominionpost.com
MORGANTOWN – West Virginia’s four 2025 congressional delegation members are wealthy. It ranges from comfortably wealthy to staggeringly wealthy.
Here’s a look.
The four members are incumbents Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Rep. Carol Miller, and newbies Senator-elect Jim Justice (currently governor) and Representative-elect Riley Moore (currently state treasurer).
In order from least to most wealthy, here is their estimated net worth: Moore, $773,003.50; Capito, $3,071,559; Miller, $16,610,033.50; Justice, $1,114,113,806.50 (just over $1.1 billion, to simplify that string of numbers).
Sen. Joe Manchin and Rep. Alex Mooney are reaching the end of their terms and aren’t included here.
Before we look at each, we’ll explain how we derived the numbers. Congressional members and candidates file financial disclosure reports with the clerks of their respective bodies. The reports include assets and liabilities and other items.
The reports also include assets and liabilities belonging to spouses, and a special category of assets and liabilities independently held by a spouse or dependent child which are nonetheless recorded with the clerks and included here.
The assets and liabilities are reported in broad ranges: $0-$1,000; $1,001-$15,000; $15,001-$50,000; $50,001-$100,000 and so on.
We employ a formula devised by the watchdog group Open Secrets for all members of Congress. It’s a best shot at an estimate given the broad reporting ranges.
We total the minimum and maximum values for assets and liabilities. To get the most probable range, we subtract the maximum liability total from the minimum asset total and the minimum liability from maximum assets. This represents the extremes of what each person could be worth. From those extremes, we take the average as the estimated net worth.
Riley Moore
Moore reports only seven assets, with a value range of $481,007 to $1,605,000. He reports no liabilities. Using the formula, his estimated worth, as mentioned above, is $773,003.50.
His single largest asset is a savings plan valued at $250,001-$500,000.
Shelley Moore Capito
Capito reports 122 assets ranging in value from $603,122 to $5,539,996. She reports four liabilities totaling $465,004 to $1,050,000. The formula puts her net worth at $3,071,559.
A lot of her assets are stocks in the $1,001-$15,000 range. A pooled investment fund is valued at $500,001-$1 million. Another pooled investment fund, one of those independently held assets, is valued at more than $1 million. Her single-largest liability is a jointly held mortgage valued at $250,001-$500,000.
Carol Miller
Miler reports 81 assets ranging from $5,695,067 to $31,525,000. She lists four independently held liabilities of more than $1 million each: a business floor plan, “mortgages,” a business loan, and another mortgage.
The formula puts her net worth at $16,610,033.50.
Her assets include 10 valued at more than $1 million each, most of them tied to her husband’s Dutch Miller car dealership chain. A Huntington apartment property and a Huntington rental property are valued at $1,000,001-$5 million each.
Jim Justice
Justice reports 147 assets ranging from $506,272,626 to $1,918,530,000. He reports 14 liabilities ranging from $37,560,013 to $159,015,000. The formula puts his net worth at that $1.1 billion figure.
His single-largest liability is a judgment owed to Carter Bank & Trust valued at more than $50 million.
He reports a line of credit valued at $25,000,001-$50 million with Maryland-based McCormick 101. According nto news reports, this is tied to a loan he received from Beltway Capital Management and McCormick 101 to keep the Greenbrier Resort off the auction block.
Justice also reports as liabilities promissory notes to Bray Cary – who served as Justice’s senior advisor – and the Cary Foundation of $1,000,001-$5 million each.
He lists a number of multi-million dollar assets with no reported income from them. Among them, James C Justice Companies, over $50 million; James C Justice Companies LLC, over $50 million; Southern Coal Corp., over $50 million; Bluestone Resources, $25,000,001-$50 million; Greenbrier Legacy Cottage Development Company 1, $25,000,001-$50 million; Greenbrier Legacy Cottage Development Company II, over $50 million; and Blackstone Energy, over $50 million.
