In a meeting extending late into the night last week, lawmakers in the House Health Committee watched a parade of doctors in white coats and alarmed mothers testify for and against loosening vaccine requirements.
“The development of all these things came from aborted babies and cell lines and whatnot,” said Chanda Adkins, a former delegate and anti-vaccine activist. “That does bother me.”
But in the middle of her presentation, Del. Scott Heckert, R-Wood, got a text, and piped up.
“I come in here with a pretty open mind about all sides of the story,” he said. “I received a message where they put my face, picture and phone number and email address out.”
“Big Pharma won’t back down — but neither will we!” read part of the mass text urging people to contact their lawmakers.
Over the last decade, debates over West Virginia’s vaccine mandate have brought out doctors pleading to maintain the state’s high vaccination rates for school-aged children and activists arguing they are both unsafe and in some cases, immoral.
But despite years of anti-vaccine activism, West Virginia’s mandates — some of the strictest in the nation — have remained.
In the last four years, a libertarian group has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars to elect candidates who would ax vaccine mandates and oust sitting lawmakers who tried to uphold them.
This year, with more handpicked lawmakers and vocal opponents gone or sidelined, Young Americans for Liberty is pushing for a full repeal of vaccine mandates.
Even as a measles outbreak in Texas has grown to nearly 150 cases, claiming one life, West Virginia lawmakers are ignoring doctors and pushing forward with a bill that could open the door for outbreaks here.
Current West Virginia law only allows for medical exemptions to vaccines for children entering school. A bill introduced this session by the governor would allow for exemptions on both religious and philosophical grounds.
Young Americans for Liberty is a libertarian organization that organizes campus activism and helps elect lawmakers who align with their beliefs. During the pandemic, the group fought COVID-19 vaccine mandates on college campuses.
The group began in the ashes of libertarian conservative Ron Paul’s 2008 failed presidential campaign. Most of its donors are unknown but it received at least $2.5 million between 2015 and 2018 from the Koch Foundation.
The group raised almost $20 million in 2023 and funds two legally separate, but interrelated organizations — a political campaign committee and a grassroots organizing arm.
The text received by Heckert and some other lawmakers came from YLA’s grassroots arm.
Nationally, Young Americans for Liberty’s stated goal is to “build the bench of liberty legislators at the state level who will advance a pro-liberty philosophy, ascend to higher office, and reclaim the direction of our government.”
Electoral support for lawmakers who will weaken vaccine requirements
Last year, lawmakers took up a bill that would have only exempted the few children who attend virtual school from receiving vaccinations.
As the bill gained momentum in the House of Delegates, more and more exemptions were tacked on.
When it hit the House floor, then-Del. Todd Kirby, amended the bill to allow for broad religious exemptions for all students, public or private.
Delegates popped out of their chairs across the House Chamber. Del. Laura Kimble, R-Harrison, the bill lead sponsor, told her fellow lawmakers that vaccinating children for herd immunity was “disingenuous, illogical, and ultimately contrary to what we claim to be most important.”
Kirby challenged the House to “make history for the State of West Virginia.”
“I would submit to this body to ignore the scare tactics and the fearmongering,” Kirby said.
In the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, Young Americans for Liberty’s campaign arm spent $46,000 helping both Kimble and Kirby get elected.
The House version passed with dozens of Republicans voting against it. But, it was short-lived.
The Senate Health Committee, chaired by radiologist Mike Maroney, rewrote the bill to allow for private and parochial schools to set their own vaccine policies, and nixed the religious exemption for public school students.
In the final days of the session, the committee heard from the usual suspects: doctors and anti-vaccine activists.
After the bill was approved by the committee, Maroney said the bill would not have been taken up if it was his choice.
“I took an oath to do no harm,” said Maroney, “And in my heart, I believe we’re doing harm to the state.”
At that point, Maroney was already in a bitter primary campaign. His opponent labeled him “Phoney Maroney” and used a picture of the senator’s mug shot. Maroney spent nearly $200,000 to try to keep his seat.
Young Americans for Liberty’s campaign arm spent $52,000 to help oust Maroney, a little more than a quarter of the average spent in a successful state senate campaign last year. The group also spent comparable amounts in the successful primary challenge of then-Senate President Craig Blair and the failed challenge against then-Sen. Eric Nelson.
When the dust settled on May 14, 2024, and Maroney lost, the group posted on Facebook a picture of Maroney superimposed onto a deer tag. It stated “RINO (Republican in Name Only) Bagged and Tagged.”
In January, Derin Stidd, a grassroots organizer for Young Americans for Liberty in Ohio and West Virginia, appeared on the Tom Roten show, a conservative talk podcast helmed by a former radio host in Huntington.
“The biggest legislative piece that we’re pushing for in West Virginia this year is we want to repeal the vaccine mandates,” Stidd said.
Stidd said the group has champions already in the Legislature — he mentioned Kimble and freshmen Delegates S. Chris Anders and Lisa White, as well as senators who successfully defeated Maroney and Blair in the primary election.
In the interview, Stidd said the campaign arm tries to hold Republican lawmakers accountable to conservative orthodoxy.
“If you don’t behave like a conservative during the legislative session, something really bad is going to happen come primary season,” he said.
This year, the vaccine bill is a priority for the governor and Senators with new power
Over in the Senate, which over the last decade had been the more moderate of the two chambers, there has been a wholesale change of leadership after the 2024 elections. The Senate President, Randy Smith, had given committee appointments to staunch conservatives who had been relegated to the rear of the chamber by Blair.
With vaccine skeptic Sen. Laura Wakim-Chapman now helming Senate Health, a bill by Gov. Patrick Morrisey to create religious and philosophical exemptions to vaccine requirements passed within the first two weeks.
When the bill came to the Senate Floor for a vote, Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, stood up from a desk near the back of the chamber.
Takubo, a pulmonologist who was the No. 2 Republican before the leadership change, told the Senate the state’s vaccine policies have kept diseases like measles and mumps out of the state.
“Every thing we do, we often compare ourselves to our neighbors,” Takubo said. “Our neighbors’ children have all suffered from preventable childhood disease.”
In an interview, Takubo said the shift in the Senate has been stark over the last couple of years.
“Currently we have elected officials that are really more of a libertarian mindset, that it’s more about their individual ideology than the majority of people they represent, in my opinion,” he said.
When the bill got to the House Health Committee, Del. S. Chris Anders, R-Berkeley, asked pointed questions to the doctors and nurses advocating for maintaining the vaccine mandates, calling concerns about measles outbreaks “doomsday prophecies.”
Until his run for the 97th district in the House, Anders worked for Young Americans for Liberty and the group’s campaign arm helped him get elected. He quit the organization before his run, citing an ethical conflict.
“I represent the Constitution and the moral gap balance of government first; then I represent the people of the 97 okay?” he said. “I don’t represent any organization or anything like that.”
Anders keeps a copy of one of Ron Paul’s books on his desk and paintings of the Revolutionary War on his office wall.
“Freedom is not a privilege granted by the government, it is a fundamental right that is rooted in bodily autonomy, parental authority and the foundational principles of liberty,” Anders said.
The bill is still pending in the House Health Committee and, so far, has not been put back on the agenda. Chair Del. Evan Worrell, R-Cabell, said he personally supports the bill but wants to get the committee on board before moving forward.
On Tuesday, Stidd, the grassroots organizer, and some of his kids were at the Capitol dropping off a petition calling for a full repeal of West Virginia’s vaccine requirements.
“We’re grateful for the governor and the work that he’s trying to do with the religious and philosophical exemptions, but we know that there are also some people trying to weaken that,” Stidd said. “We’re saying it doesn’t need to be weakened.”
But if the bill makes it to the House Floor, there’s liable to be some opposition within the Republican ranks.
Del. Keith Marple, R-Harrison, was one of the Republican delegates who voted against last year’s bill. An older man, Marple recalls he went through the ringer of all the diseases vaccines have largely eradicated from American society.
“I had the measles, I had the mumps, chicken pox, and luckily, nothing more serious,” Marple said. “And kids today, if they get vaccinated, they usually don’t get those things.”