Mountain State Spotlight reached out to all four of the GOP gubernatorial front-runners requesting interviews. Mac Warner is the only one who agreed to answer our questions.
Here is a transcript of Mountain State Spotlight reporter Henry Culvyhouse’s interview with Warner. Questions came from the Mountain State Spotlight staff and from our readers.
Mountain State Spotlight: So I guess we’ll just jump right into it. You’re one of two people in this race are currently serving in an executive branch position
Mac Warner: Yes.
Mountain State Spotlight: How does your experience as Secretary of State transition into duties as governor, if you were to be elected?
Warner: One, I’m very comfortable now with state government and how it works – HR issues, that sort of thing. We are operating with about 15-20% fewer people today in the Secretary of State’s office than I did when I came in. I found that the ability to leverage technology to work very assertively with the people in the office to focus on customer service. It’s answering the phone, it’s greeting people at the door, it’s handling one person, one case at a time to solve whatever that issue is, whether it’s in business, whether it’s in the elections, a candidate finance filing.
It’s that attention to detail with the customer, the citizens of West Virginia. I think we’ve been very successful in the Secretary of State’s office in accomplishing that, doing more with less people.
I mentioned leveraging technology, I’ll give you a couple examples.
In the election arena, we have a “see something text something” for fraud, allegations of fraud, for people who think something is happening improperly. They can now take a picture of it and text immediately. We have five times the number of investigators we did before – we’re taking investigations very seriously. We can put an investigator pretty much anywhere in this state within about an hour.
What happened previously, you would have an election and a week or two later, somebody would report a violation and you start on a cold case. At that point you’re trying to track down witnesses, what happened, where it occurred. Right now, instantaneously, using your cell phone, you can report a violation, we can get an investigator there, perhaps while the offense is still going on – if someone’s intimidating someone at the polls, buying votes, double voting. So we’ve learned through the Secretary of State’s office how to make the government much more responsive to the people.
In the same arena, with the business and licensing division, we’ve come up with “SOLO”, the single online location, where we’re using artificial intelligence, generative AI, to answer business questions that come in. “What’s the difference between an LLC and a partnership?” Or “should we incorporate our business?”
We captured about 900 questions that came in on a routine basis over the course of a year, put that into a database. Then as people fine tune it by asking the same question, but a little bit differently, artificial intelligence picks that up. Now we have over 10,000 or tens of thousands of questions that might be asked. Our chatbot, our ability to give an answer, based on the state code, based on our most experienced personnel in the office, based on the questions that have come in repeatedly, we can give that answer back to people 24/7.
In your pajamas at home, late at night, on a Saturday night, you have a question about your business, you can get online and get that question answered and it will be answered consistently. Whereas if you call in on Monday morning, you might get the person that’s been there 30 years and really knows the ins and outs of business. Or you might get the person we just hired six months ago. That level of experience, expertise is going to be different.
With artificial intelligence, you’ve got the right answer every time. And you don’t have to wait. Now, if you want to talk to a person, you can always get to a person in the Secretary of State’s office.
I want to take that experience we’ve learned in the Secretary State’s Office and apply it across state government. So imagine what we can do to clean up or make DMV more effective or efficient Child Protective Services, everything that was in DHHR, DEP. I want to improve all of those agencies across state government using the experience I’ve learned as Secretary of State.
Mountain State Spotlight: Sounds like more a focus on constituent services.
Warner: Exactly. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to serve the people of West Virginia.
My business, we have elections. I’m chief elections officer, we’ve cleaned up elections, we’ve made West Virginia the model for the rest of the nation.
That’s what I was just on with that Zoom call right there. They were asking “West Virginia, what are you doing? How you doing it? How are you so successful?”
I’ve been asked four times to testify in front of Congress about West Virginia’s success.
So we’ve made them a model in the elections arena. That’s why you see so many candidates running for office right now they have confidence in the elections. We have increased voter turnout. We’ve removed 400,000 names — that’s 400,000 opportunities for fraud no longer exist. So we’ve cleaned it up.
We’ve taken very seriously the responsibilities of the office and that’s what the people have asked me to do. At the same time we’ve implemented voter identification without one lawsuit or any problems whatsoever. Things are running smoothly in the elections arena, things are running very smoothly in the business licensing arena. And I just want to take that expertise across state government.
Mountain State Spotlight: Looking back at past debates, forums, you’ve mentioned on various issues that you would want to follow the lead of the Legislature — I think at one point, you said 134 heads are better than one. Do you intend to be a pretty decisive governor with a clear cut vision or are you going to let the Legislature set the policy?
Warner: It’ll be a partnership, a teamwork approach. These people were elected for a reason from the respective parts of the state. We have a vast diversity of thought, opinion, experiences: doctors, lawyers, plumbers, electricians, school teachers. It’s all in the Legislature and from all different parts of the state. The things they are experiencing in Jefferson County in the Eastern Panhandle are different from Hancock County in the Northern Panhandle, or McDowell County in the south. That’s where we have to listen to those people and their expertise in the communities that elected them.
But yes, I will be a decisive commander.
My military background is what makes me the best position to be the chief executive for the state of West Virginia.The military has trained me — it’s kind of second nature to anybody who served a long period of time andI did serve a career in the military — to analyze issues.
The military doesn’t teach what to think, they teach you how to think. Because going into Panama is different from Haiti and Bosnia, Ukraine and Afghanistan, each one is different.
That’s why they have a staff. You have a G-1, which is personnel, a G-2 is intelligence, G-3 is operations, G-4 is logistics. So a commander will take information from all those different staff officers and then he’ll put it to his staff and say, formulate, give me three options. OK, we’re coming from the air, we come in from the sea, we hit hard with the ground, you have different options. Then based on timing, the Commander-in-Chief’s directive as the President, the resources that Congress has given, you have to take in all those factors, and then come up with the best course of action.
Well, it’s the same thing as governor.
I need to take in the ideas from the Legislature, from the Senate, the non-government organizations, the expertise. Say, the health care if we’re dealing with vaccines, and that sort of thing in the medical professionals, and then formulate the best policy.
What I’ve learned I will then share with the Legislature — that’s what a State of the State address is all about. It’s to lay out the visions that I’ve had, what I’ve learned on the campaign trail talking to people, then present it to the legislature and run it through that filter of “does it make sense to them across the state and all the different parts of state?”
My wife is in the Legislature. I plan to work very closely with the Legislature — she will be a real asset. She knows every one of those legislators by name. It’s going to be a collaborative effort.
The people of West Virginia are going to see a whole new government, when we come into the administration, a collaborative cooperative approach, rather than a combative (one). I think we’ve seen a number of combative issues over the last few years.
Mountain State Spotlight: You’ve said that your faith guides your decisions you make and some of the policy positions that you take. While using your faith as a guide, how do you ensure you won’t use your position to impose your view of Christianity on West Virginians who might not necessarily believe the same you believe?
Warner: I think the best place that comes out is in the question of abortion.
My faith teaches me that life begins at conception and it doesn’t end until natural death. So that’s our job as the government is to protect us. All men are created equal. They’re endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.That’s the role of government. That’s the foundation of our whole democratic system.
It’s not our job to proselytize and turn people into one faith or another. That’s the first amendment. Government shall not make a law that makes it basically a state religion.
I’ve been trained as a lawyer to see both sides of an issue. I’ve been a prosecutor and I’ve been a defense counsel. To tell you the truth, I learned a lot more as a defense counsel than I ever did as a prosecutor or even in law school. Because as a defense counsel, many times you are defending somebody who’s guilty of a particular offense. Buty many times the prosecution is overcharging and they’re trying to get a plea deal. You’re really stretched to use every tool at your disposal to defend their rights. Even though that may offend some people, if any one of us or our family members were charged with an offense you would want the most vigorous defense counsel available.
So it really instilled in me this sense of taking a look at both sides, seeing what the evidence really presents, and then seeing what the law is, then taking a look at the judge and jury.
I’ll shift to the vaccine because this is one where my wife and I differed. I think that vaccines, especially coming out of COVID, there was so much disinformation, misinformation about vaccines, such pressure on people to take that shot. Many people were threatened with their jobs. We weren’t necessarily threatened with our job in the state government, but there was a pretty high focus or intense pressure on people inside the Statehouse to go get your vaccines.
Vaccines don’t bother me because I was in the military. I had over 20 shots for just one deployment. I’ve jumped out of airplanes because that was my job. GI means Government Issued. My body belonged to Uncle Sam. If he was to get a shot, I got a shot.
What I thought should have happened in that situation, I thought the military should have vaccinated half the people and not vaccinated the other. What if that vaccination turned nasty, unforeseen? You saw the short amount of time that was developed. What if there’s an unforeseen thing? And all of a sudden everybody in the military that was forced to take a shot, turns up incapacitated?
So that’s that balanced approach, seeing two sides of things.
So my wife’s in the Legislature, she’s up in Morgantown, she represents hospitals and doctors and physicians and nurses. They put a lot of pressure on her saying, “Don’t step back on the vaccinations. We need to vaccinate everybody in schools”.
My perspective is that it’s a right of a parent to decide what gets put in their child and that’s from personal experience.
My wife was working one day as a substitute teacher, I took my first child, Stephen, in for shots — this was over in Germany. This syringe was huge. I was like, “There is no way.” I don’t care what the vaccination is, that is too much and it’s not going into my child.
They said, “Oh, no, no, this is the proper dose”.
I said “you’re not sticking a needle in my son’s arm.” I want to see the doctor.
They finally brought the doctor in. And he looked at it — that was three times the dose of what should have been going into that child.
I was right just from a common sense, human perspective. That sticks with me to this day, that I as a parent should be the one that’s deciding what goes into my child.
If I’m going to homeschool my child or if we live far removed in the country — West Virginia was the last state in the union to report a case of COVID. If I live in the remote part of West Virginia, and West Virginia doesn’t even have COVID why should I be forced by the government to go stick a needle in my son’s arm or daughter’s arm?
That’s the perspective I come from.
To cut to the chase, I would have signed that bill. Because I don’t know more than the Legislature — 134 heads are better than one. And they said, “We should not require the shots.” Now do I think it’s a good idea? Yes. Would I vaccinate my kid? Yes. But I don’t think I should dictate, as the governor, that you’ve got to put the needle in your kid’s arm.
My wife voted one way, I would have decided another.
I don’t know if you’re married, but I don’t know if you can tell your wife what to do. But my wife has a mind of her own. And I think she represented — that’s what representative democracy is all about.
That was not necessarily a moral issue, to some people it is a moral issue. But she saw it as she was representing her constituency. I don’t blame her for it, I don’t fault her for it. It’s just I would have decided the other way.
Mountain State Spotlight: So kind of in terms of the question I asked there, while you obviously allow for your faith to guide you, you also are taking in that input from as a duly elected officer of the state.
Warner: You got it.
Mountain State Spotlight: We asked them (our readers) to tell us what questions do you want to hear from candidates, kind of across the gamut. A lot of our readers told us that their abortion was a top issue for them. I know that you’ve gone on record multiple times in support of the state’s current laws regarding abortion. What is your stance on other issues in regards to reproductive health such as contraceptives or the morning after pill?
Warner: I think the issue that’s forefront right now is the Alabama decision on in vitro fertilization. To me, as soon as that sperm fertilizes that egg, you’ve got human life.
I was just with an OBGYN doctor last night — we were talking about this very thing. He actually delivered a child at 22 and a half weeks, pretty much about as young as you can possibly get. He said, just a few years ago, it was 28 weeks, and then 26 and 24. As we get more and more advanced, that gets closer and closer.
Where do you draw that line? Here we go to my faith. My biblical perspective says that God knew us in the womb before we were born, didn’t put a time limit on it. And life begins at conception. That’s my perspective.
But am I going to emphatically enforce that upon other people, especially a Legislature that has come up with what I think are reasonable steps? No, I’m not going to overstep that. Unless it were to get to the point, let’s say the Legislature said, you’re gonna have an abortion up until the day before birth. That one’s too far for me.
Mountain State Spotlight:There’s a lot of parts here, and there’s a lot more than you can do as governor on this issue. How would you make health care more affordable and accessible for vulnerable people such as poor people, women, seniors, people of color, people with disabilities and LGBT, West Virginians?
Warner: Everybody is a human in my eyes, God’s eyes, the Legislatures’ eyes, or whatever.
I don’t think we need to carve out special exceptions for one particular group of people over another. We need to take care of everybody. It’s a matter of prioritization and state funding and the ability to tax the citizens.
As a Republican, I always want to reduce taxes. Government should only be doing those things that people can’t do for themselves. There’s a number of things that churches can do, NGOs can do. I want to encourage those courses of action.
One of the things is the children in foster care, we have about 7,200 to as many as 7,500 people in the foster care system in need of good homes. We now are having so many babies that are born addicted to drugs, because of their parents and the parents can’t take care of them.
Now we’re in a situation where the state needs to take care of those babies.
We can impress from conservative or Republican principles individual responsibility. But when those parents have checked out of the net, for whatever reason, there’s a life. We have to worry about not just children in the womb and abortion, we need to worry about the children after they’re born.
And that’s why my focus is on education, and especially early childhood education. I love what the Legislature has done with the Success in Education Act, putting the systems in grades one, two, and three. But I want to back it up even into kindergarten, pre-kindergarten, and birth to three-years-old.
We need to get affordable, accessible child care, so that the parents can go back to work if they want to. We talk about workforce participation. Well, many people aren’t able to be in the workforce. They’ve got children, and they can’t find health care or child care providers or affordable child care.
I wish the Legislature would have addressed this last session — it came up but they didn’t pass a bill. That was the reimbursement based on enrollment versus attendance. Right now, the state, coming up in September, will stop reimbursing and it’s based on attendance. But the child care providers can’t build a workable model based on attendance, because you don’t know if you’ll have 30 kids show up or 20 kids. You still have to have the same number of lunches prepared, the lights are on in the facilities, you still have the same number of staff whether 20 kids show up or 30 show up.
They would like to have the reimbursement based on enrollment. If you have 30 enrolled you’re going to reimburse for 30. And that makes sense to me as a businessman as to how we now can start working with the private industry to create affordable, accessible child care. It’s not just warehousing a child. I want these early childhood providers to have the same respect and pay as other teachers so that we show respect to education from birth all the way through 12.
Mountain State Spotlight: One thing has been brought up — maybe things will change between now and when the current budget goes into effect — there were some issues with the Medicaid match, getting enough matching dollars to draw down more federal dollars. In the recent budget, they didn’t put as much into the Medicaid, the state side of Medicaid, they have in the past, would that be something that you’d want to try to revisit?
Warner: Well, we need to be on top of this on the front end, not just get this money off and let people spend it then find out they mispent it and more that we didn’t know about. I’ve been disheartened by a number of things, going back to the floods of 2016. I understand there’s still people that haven’t got their housing. We just need to do a better job as a government being on top of — I go back to my time as secretary of state and service to those customers. And if they have identified an issue, we need to be addressing it from the government’s perspective and doing a much better job of it than we have been.
Mountain State Spotlight: You mentioned this earlier, when you first took office at the Secretary of State, you reduced the staff there. Multiple people,some who were not political appointees. If elected governor, should state or state workers who are not political appointees — just everyday folks — have to worry about any kind of downsizing?
Warner: Let’s go back and revisit that for a moment.
There were problems within the Secretary of State’s office and the Capitol Police knew about those problems. Those problems were brought to my attention. So there actually wasn’t a firing. What I said was, “I don’t intend to hire those people or rehire them as they come on.” These were at-will employees.
When you talk to people in the office, they will let you know who the workers are, who the slackers are, and I had that information. I said we were giving them enough warning that if they wanted to go find a job elsewhere in the state government, they could.
What I will be doing as governor is a similar sort of approach — going around agency to agency and talking with people and making sure we have the right people in the right positions. When you have the right people, when you surround yourself with good people that understand the job of DEP or DHHR, or DMV. When you have the right people at the top, then it’s their job to get down at the lower levels and make sure that their staffing is correct and they’re cleaning up, streamlining or making their agencies the most efficient.
So I will be looking at the heads of the agencies and making sure we have the right people in the right place.
I’ve had a wonderful staff and Secretary of State’s Office. That’s how I think we’ve been so successful in the elections division and in the business licensing division. I’ll just take that same approach towards the state government.
Mountain State Spotlight: One of the duties — you’ve mentioned this before — of the governor is to propose a budget. I know you’ve expressed support for lowering taxes. In order to balance that budget, where would you be looking at cuts in the budget to balance it if you want to try to lower the taxes?
Warner: This is one where you’re gonna look at it across the board, talk to the experts, see if there’s any room for improvement. And right now, I don’t have a hatchet ready to say, we need to cut here, here, here. I want to get into that position, and get the right people in place to advise me as to where these cuts could occur.
Mountain State Spotlight: This is a reader’s question here. As Governor, how will you balance economic development while still protecting West Virginia’s natural resources such as the water, air quality and land quality?
Warner: Sure, there’s no one that loves this state more than me. I love being outdoors. We’ve got a farm in the middle of Braxton County. I was an Eagle Scout, love the outdoors. I’ve been to Philmont, New Mexico three times and what we have at Bechdel Summit just blows Philmont away. I mean, I’m so proud of what we’ve got there. Love to hunt and fish.
We all want a good, clean environment. At the same time, we want to have economic opportunities for our people and I don’t want the government to come in with a heavy hand and say, “we’re just gonna cut coal or we’re gonna cut oil or gas.”
I will get the right person in charge of DEP to make sure that we get the proper balance between economic opportunity and making sure that the water’s clean, the air is clean and so on.
I was just on a tour of Chemours in Parkersburg — that place was spotless. And time and time again, they said, “we want a clean environment just as much as anybody else. And we strive to be better than what the requirements are for the state.” Their frustration was in the state permitting process. And it really wasn’t as much of the state as the federal permitting process. They said we have a pretty good permitting team, agency inspectors inside of the state. It’s the federal government that keeps holding things up. To move ahead, stay competitive in the market, they need to speed up EPA approvals.
That’s where I would be working as a governor with the federal government and saying, “let’s be reasonable in this approach.” But let’s not just shoot ourselves in the foot to have a token “we’re going to adhere to whatever green agenda is out there.”
Mountain State Spotlight: And this is another one from our readers. What will you do, especially up in the Eastern Panhandle — I think this was where this came from — what would you do to ensure housing is available and affordable to those in need in some of West Virginia’s growing communities such as Berkeley, and Jefferson’s counties up there in the Eastern Panhandle?
Warner: I just spent three or four days out there in the Eastern Panhandle. And these right now, just this week. I was out there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And I heard that same thing, we have to find affordable housing.
My approach to economic development in West Virginia is instead of giving companies money to come, that’s basically buying jobs. So he says,”We’re gonna give you 800 jobs, we’ll give them $300 million dollars.”
That’s not my approach. That may have been needed a couple of years ago, as West Virginia was becoming more business friendly. We got rid of prevailing wage, we became a right-to-work state, we were legislatively saying that the doors are open for business in West Virginia. Now, we needed to get some businesses. And so we went out and got some. We’ve had a couple of years of pretty good announcements. The problem is what if one of these people that just got that $300 million decides to sell that company and take that money and go somewhere else. Well, we’ve lost that investment.
What I want to do is I want to put that investment into the ground — roads, sewer, water, internet, broadband. I want to solve those issues, so that that site is ready for any number of companies. And then have the companies compete.
And the local community gets to say, “No, we don’t want that solar-powered or electric vehicle or whatever. We want something else here.”
In Morgantown. I lived through a big thing where Walmart wanted to come into one site, and they all fought it. Well, now in that same place, there’s a Kroger’s and fast food and all this stuff. Why? Why the opposition to Walmart? It was a local pushback against big companies. Was it right or wrong? That’s what the locals decided that they wanted. So the locals decide or should have a strong voice in what company comes in. It shouldn’t be dictated from the state.
What bothered me in some of these cases, things were kept so secret until the last moment, then it was sprung on the community. That’s not my style. Out in the Eastern Panhandle, I had a county commissioner that was talking to us about the DMV from West Virginia. And they didn’t know that the roads in the city were going to be paved until trucks showed up. And they were looking for a place to store certain equipment.
They went to the county commission and said, “we need something” “Why do you need space for trucks and staging areas?” “Oh, we’re gonna pave the roads”. “ Why didn’t you tell me that six months ago or a year ago, so we could plan inform the neighborhoods and so on”
My military experience and my State Department experience was you staff issues. They call it socializing, you get with not only the other agencies within the state, but you get with the local communities, you have non-governmental organizations, you let everybody know what your plan is. So if there is opposition, they have time to respond. I just have more of a teamwork and collaborative approach to things than a dictatorial approach.
Mountain State Spotlight: You’ve definitely touched on this — Maybe you can go into a little bit more specifics. How would you improve the infrastructure, such as the roads, broadband, water, gas? you talked about investing some of that money we might use for recruitment into those sorts of things. Are there any other kinds of plans that you have for this?
Warner: It’s about prioritization, it’s back to the right people and it’s inspection. What gets inspected gets done.
Back 10-15 years ago, there was a lot of money that went into routers, and we bought routers, and they went and put them in library closets. And within a few years, they were outdated. Millions of dollars wasted.
There wasn’t the priority, there wasn’t the training, there wasn’t the emphasis. I’m not even sure if there was a plan in place, but they had money and they spent it on routers. And I think there may have been some fraud, but it never was investigated sufficiently to hold someone accountable.
So back to your issue. We’re going to make sure we have the right people with the right plan, socialize with the citizens, get through the Legislature, make sure that we have buy-in from all of those, with a priority.
That’s my approach to solving the infrastructure.
There’s a limit to everything. There’s a limited amount of money, a limited amount of time. What’s the most important thing to West Virginia at this moment? And that will be a transparent decision rather than hide behind closed doors and spring it on people.
Mountain State Spotlight: This is one from a colleague of mine – you hit on this a little earlier.
You said previously, child care has been pretty important for economic growth and for economic development, especially for bolstering our workforce participation. If elected governor, how do you plan to increase child care ability and availability in areas that are pretty much child care deserts, that don’t have anything, like in a lot of the remote parts of this state?
Warner: I’ve been to several forums where they’ve talked about child care and I plan to work with those child care providers. You’ve heard one of my things and that is getting a model, a state reimbursement model that works for them. There’s a certain margin that they have to hit or otherwise it’s not successful. And there’s a teacher shortage.
Cubbie’s up in Clarksburg, one of the largest ones in the state has a capability for over 600 students. But right now they’re operating with just over 400. And they have a waiting list of three or 400? You’ve got a waiting list and you have a capability, why aren’t you housing more or keeping more?
The answer was teacher shortages. After COVID, they just wanted to get a full capacity to get the model working. But they ended up hiring people — some weren’t trained, weren’t qualified, they had problems with them showing up for work. Others they lost when the state Legislature put in the Success and Education Act and took people out to put them in grades one, two, and three.
They’re battling with our own state Legislature. I’m not faulting either one. I’m just saying that’s a reality. And they didn’t want to lower their quality, their standards of child care by just taking anybody off the street to be a teacher.
There are a lot of moving parts to this, getting the right people, getting them trained. Getting the reimbursement, there’s a lot of factors to that. One of the things that I want to do in helping the teacher shortage is the Troops to Teachers program that the military offers. That is to bring people with military experience that can get credit for their military training. They have the discipline, they’re gonna show up for work. They’re gonna be able to pass drug tests.
I want to make West Virginia friendly to veterans. I think we can do more in the tax structure. Just small amenities — free fishing license or driver’s license, give them a license tag on their plate.
Veterans aren’t real demanding. But if you just show a little bit of recognition, a little bit of appreciation, it goes a long way. And I think we can be more attractive to bring those people back to state and help us solve some of these other issues.
Mountain State Spotlight: This is a fun question. You’ve said and you’ve said in the past that the CIA and the FBI helped to rig the election against Donald Trump in 2020. You’ve also said the West Virginia elections are fair and clean here. Why should we believe you aren’t in cahoots with the CIA or the FBI?
Warner: (Laughs) The problem with the FBI and the CIA was this — these former agents, this was Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, Peneta, these were heads of the CIA. Their names are synonymous with the CIA. They took an idea from Tony Blinken, who is now our current U.S. Secretary of State. And he was working for Biden. He came up with the idea to lie to the American people. He said that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. He knew that it wasn’t. He knew that the Russians hadn’t planted that. But he gave that idea to these heads of the CIA and they ran with it. They got other intelligence officials to sign this paper. Fifty-one so-called intelligence experts lied to the American people and they knew it was a lie.
And the reason I’m saying they knew it was a lie, because Mike Morell headed this — former Acting Director of the CIA — he was one that got it out to everybody. He testified under oath at the House Judiciary Committee to Jim Jordan, that Tony Blinken gave him this idea to lie and he ran with it, to help Joe Biden in the election and to hurt Donald Trump. He said that. Under sworn testimony.
So this lie is perpetrated on the American people. And Joe Biden used that in the debate right before the election of November 2020. So he used that it wasn’t just as the people saying it, but Joe Biden used that. And Trump didn’t have the time to counter that before the election. So the American people went to the polls, with the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop was not real, that it was Russian disinformation. They pulled a psychological operation on the American people. And I take real offense at that. I’ve been in the military, I’ve had top secret security clearances. I’ve been a part of psychological operations in other countries. It’s one thing to run a psychological operation and lie to people in foreign countries. It’s a different thing to lie to the American people.
Mountain State Spotlight: OK, I see what you mean now. I guess when I heard that soundbite I guess I interpreted as you know, the FBI and the CIA being back there stuffing the ballot box.
Warner: The Hoppy Kerchevals and the others have tried to pin into that. I appreciate you taking the time to understand what I’m saying.
Mountain State Spotlight: So it was a propaganda psyop deal, is what you’re trying to say?
Warner: And the FBI covered it up. They put that letter out and the FBI kept their mouth shut.
I’m going to get you back to why the experience that I have makes me the right person to be governor of West Virginia. I went to the United States Military Academy at West Point where there’s an honor code that says a cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do. The toleration of a lie is just as bad as the lie itself. I was on the Honor committee. We kicked out over 150 of my classmates for lying, cheating, stealing and tolerating lies. We only had a class of about 800. We graduated with about 650. We kicked out 150. This is personal to me. This is at the core of who I am.
So when our own FBI covers up the lie, they tolerated the lie that these CIA former officers did. I get real incensed about it. I’ve raised my hand a number of times swearing to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This was the first time in my life, I had to worry about that domestic threat to our Constitution.
Our CIA lies to us, the FBI covers it up, and then it gets worse. They both go to big tech, they go to Facebook, and again, this is under oath by Mark Zuckerberg — no, he was not under oath, he was on the Joe Rogan show. And he said, yes, they came to me and asked me to cover it up to suppress the story because it was likely Russian disinformation. And he did.
So these two — one lies, the other covers it up and they both go and they suppress it with big tech and big tech accommodates.
That’s why I say the election was stolen. It wasn’t fair.
So I can assure the people of West Virginia that elections in West Virginia are fair. But what happens at the national level I can’t control.
And that’s why I challenge everybody to use critical thinking in anything that comes out of the federal government, or anybody for that matter. You balance it against other sources of input, and listen to people, like you. You were willing to take the time to talk to somebody who’s the chief elections officer for the state who sees this firsthand.
I’ve been asked to testify in front of Congress four times now, I attend the secret briefings over at the fusion center, I have access at the National Association of Secretaries of State. I’m in a pretty good position to know what’s going on. And yet, people like Hoppy Kercheval and the Charleston Gazette haven’t interviewed me on this issue. They want to pigeonhole me that I’m a nutcase because I’m saying the election was stolen because I agree with Donald Trump. It was stolen, but it was done in a sophisticated manner. And the people, the United States and the people of West Virginia need to know that the election was not fair.
And if we don’t clean it up, if we don’t address it, we’re apt to have it happen to us again.
And we’re all suffering because of what happened in that 2020 election — with inflation, with an open border, with crises all over the world from October 7, to Taiwan to North Korea to Iran right now. These sorts of things never happened under Donald Trump’s administration. They were afraid of him. He was unpredictable. And in warfare, you need that unpredictability, to keep people on their toes to say, maybe we’re not gonna mess with them.
Mountain State Spotlight: And then, I guess my only question would be, is there anything else that you’d like to add that you’d like the people know about yourself running for governor you’d like to throw out there?
Warner: I’m a native born sixth generation West Virginia. I love this state. I love the people of this state, I love the history of the state, and I am running to be governor of West Virginia.
I am not running to be the U.S. Senator. A couple of the people in this race are using this as a stepping stone so they then can go to the swamp and be in DC. That’s where they want to be.
And I’m referring to Patrick Morrisey. Moore Capito wants to take his mom’s seat. Those people have their eyes on other seats. I don’t have my eye on any other seat. I want to be governor of West Virginia simply because of my love. I’ve lived all over the world, been to more than 80 countries. I’ve lived in eight states in the United States and been to every state. I can live anywhere I want. And I choose to come right back here to West Virginia because of my love.
Right across the street from the Capitol is Ruffner church where I went to church and became an Eagle Scout. I’ve done the full circle of life, and absolutely love it. I will be with my wife who I have been with for 41 years — raised four kids, have eight grandchildren, and we will live in the governor’s mansion. And I can pretty much assure you every morning I will probably be the first one into work. And I’ll probably be the last one to leave because that’s typically when I’ve been as the Secretary of State.
With my grandchildren, this is the focus of my life. My wife decided not to run for House of Delegates again, because she wanted to focus on this race and become the first lady of West Virginia. So that’s what I want to leave with people.
And one more thing is, I know the governor just endorsed Moore Capito yesterday. They are both advised by Larry Puccio, who was the former Democratic Chair of the party in West Virginia. And Joe Manchin’s right hand man, the Republicans have fought for decades now to get rid of Joe Manchin and to be represented by conservative in the U.S. Senate. He’s finally retired and what do we do? We’re ready to elect Jim Justice and then Moore Capito being advised by Larry Puccio, who has been Joe Manchin’s right hand man who was Earl Ray Tomblin’s advisor? These are Democrats.
The Republican Party should not be voting for people who are being advised by the Democratic Party chair. And Morrisey wants to be a U.S. senator. He waited until the last minute. He was going to run against Mooney for the U.S. Senate. But then when Jim Justice got in the race, he went and got $10 million. Catch this. Why would somebody get $10 million from an anti-Trump organization, The Club for Growth, when Jim Justice only spent $5 million to get elected? And now the right to put $10 million into a small state governors race? They don’t want Morrisey to be governor, they want to buy a U.S. Senate seat. $10 million is cheap for a U.S. Senate seat. Think about Texas and Florida and California and New York, how much money is spent on a US Senate race. If they can buy you a Senate race for $10 million dollars.
But if Morrisey gets elected governor, I’ll bet you in ‘26 he’ll run against Shelly Moore Capito for the U.S. Senate. Or if something were to happen to one of those two senators, he will appoint himself to be a senator. He wants to be in the swamp of DC. He doesn’t want to be here in Charleston. He’s from New Jersey, is born in New York, he lobbied for the DC lobbyists, his wife has taken positions counter to the state party of West Virginia.
The three documents that control Mac Warner’s life and administration is the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the state Republican Party platform. All 10 planks, I adhere to the T. I’m a strong proponent of every one of those, including strong family values. And marriage is between one man and one woman. That’s in the Republican Party plank. You ask the other candidates I’m not sure they’re gonna adhere to that nearly as strongly as I do.
So yes, I appreciate that last question, give me a chance to tell people what differentiates Mac
Warner from the others.
I’m ready to serve on day one, as the chief executive for the state of West Virginia, which includes being the commander in chief for the West Virginia National Guard, I would suggest the best national guard with a very proud legacy going all the way back all the way back to the formation of the United States Army.
You’ve got a guy who has worn the uniform, who knows the proper use of those differences between title 10 and title 32, the proper use as a State National Guard in the state capacity or in the national capacity. And that’s what I would ask the people of West Virginia to do is to look at the qualifications, the demeanor, the competency that I bring to the office versus some of the others.
Mountain State Spotlight: I appreciate your time sir.
Here are the questions we tried to get Warner’s opponents — Patrick Morrisey, Chris Miller and Moore Capito — to answer.