A political donor credited with helping engineer the conservative takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court is spending big bucks to elect a judge to a full 10-year term on West Virginia’s newest appeals court.
In late April, First Principles PAC, a Tennessee-based political organization that runs advertising in favor or against candidates but does not contribute directly to campaigns, spent $269,000 to elect Judge Dan Greear to the West Virginia Intermediate Court of Appeals.
First Principles registered with the Federal Election Commission in December 2024. Since then, FEC filings show the Lexington Fund, a political nonprofit funded by conservative activist Leonard Leo, is the primary financial backer of the PAC.
Leo has assisted with the confirmations of every Republican judge appointed to the Supreme Court since Clarence Thomas.
Then-Gov. Jim Justice appointed Greear and two other judges to the newly formed court in 2022, but all are coming up for election to the court on a staggered two-year schedule. Greear is running this year.
The appeals court, created to decrease the caseload of the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals, handles civil cases about discrimination, worker compensation and property disputes, in addition to family court cases.
Last year, the court reinstated civil trespassing charges against four protestors of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and found that discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation is legal in West Virginia. Two years before that, it reversed a worker’s compensation claim a man had filed because he was hit by a truck while rendering aid to an injured driver on I-79 while en route to a union plumbing job.
Greear ruled in favor of all those decisions.
More recently, Greear recused himself from ruling on a data center air quality permit appeal after public criticism for his political and financial ties to House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, who is representing data center clients in the case.
Greear told Mountain State Spotlight he has never heard of Leo or First Principles, and does not know why they have supported his campaign.
“The rules are what the rules are. And the rules allow people to make independent expenditures,” he said. “It’s beyond mine or anybody else’s control what outside people do in our races.”
As co-chair of the Federalist Society, a legal organization that advocates for conservative viewpoints, Leo has supported judges who state they read the law as it was originally intended, without regard to how society has changed over the years.
Greear describes his own judicial philosophy similarly.
“Our job is not to impose our beliefs or views or own ideas, but follow the law that was crafted by the legislature and constitution as drafted,” he said.
Over the years, Leo has influenced state courts, using a network of nonprofit organizations to fund elections for conservative judges and attorneys general.
“They’ve long had a focus on getting right-wingers into office, such as attorneys general, to then weaponize these offices,” said Evan Vorpahl, a director of State Courts and Democracy Projects at True North Research, a watchdog group devoted to uncovering money in politics.
“And they certainly targeted state supreme courts to pack these courts with justices who will be a rubber stamp on his (Leo’s) agendas,” he added.
While Greear might not have heard of Leo, the Washington insider has long dabbled in West Virginia politics. The Republican Attorney General Association ran $5 million in ads to assist in the reelection of then-Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in 2016. Tax documents obtained by ProPublica show Leo-connected nonprofits were the number one funder of that group over the years.
During his 12 years as attorney general, Morrisey sued the federal government multiple times to weaken regulations that keep air and water clean and to overturn laws that prevent insurance companies from dropping people for preexisting conditions.
Greear served as chief counsel during Morrisey’s first term as attorney general.
In 2018, the Republican State Leadership Committee, another group funded partially by Leo’s network, spent $35,000 to help Greear in an unsuccessful run for Kanawha County Circuit Court judge.
“These groups don’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars for no reason,” Vorpahl said. “So I think there’s certainly a reason that they may think the candidates may be a rubber stamp of Leo’s agenda, whether or not the candidate is aware of Leo or knows him personally.”
Kanawha County Family Court Judge Jim Douglas is running for Greear’s seat because he’s concerned that the judges on the Intermediate Court have no family law background. He has concerns with all the outside money being spent in the race.
“Considering this docket, that kind of money is not coming in to help families and family law. That’s not coming in for that purpose,” Douglas said.
While the state Supreme Court has the final say on any ruling the intermediate court issues, it takes more time and more money for someone to appeal that decision.
Douglas said by the court’s design, monied interests have an advantage over less fortunate plaintiffs who get a ruling from the court. It takes money to keep appealing cases to higher courts.
“They want a conservative judgment, and they realize that, as most of us do now in the legal profession, ICA is the last word. It’s the last court of last resort,” Douglas said.
But Leo isn’t stopping with the Intermediate Court of Appeals. First Principles is spending thousands of dollars in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals race. Black Bear PAC, a committee associated with supporting Morrisey, is also spending money in that race. Both committees are supporting Morrisey appointee Gerald Titus.
And this isn’t the first time powerful people have spent money on a statewide court race. Back in 2004, coal baron Don Blankenship spent more than $3 million to run attack ads to help elect Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court. The Republican State Leadership Committee dumped more than $1 million to elect the late Tim Armstead to the bench in 2018 and 2020.
Voters concerned about the influx of money from powerful people outside the state should stop and think, Vorpahl said.
“I think people are interested, should be interested in what the ultimate agenda of these people are and why they’re spending millions on these races.”
