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Gaunch yields WV Senate presidency to Carmichael

Charleston Gazette-Mail file photo Sen. Ed Gaunch, R-Kanawha, during a legislative meeting in May 2015. Gaunch, after considering a run for state Senate president, said Monday he won’t run and will support current Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, instead.
Charleston Gazette-Mail file photo
Sen. Ed Gaunch, R-Kanawha, during a legislative meeting in May 2015. Gaunch, after considering a run for state Senate president, said Monday he won’t run and will support current Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, instead.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — After a brief flirtation with running for the president’s chair in the West Virginia Senate, a Kanawha County senator has ended his candidacy.

Sen. Ed Gaunch, R-Kanawha, confirmed Monday he has ended his candidacy for Senate president, and has pledged his support to Senate Majority Leader Mitch Carmichael, R-Jackson, for the post.

Carmichael, who narrowly won re-election to a second term in the Senate on Nov. 8, on Monday thanked Gaunch for conceding “very gracefully,” and said he looks forward to a 2017 legislative session devoted to growing the state economy and not distracted by social issues.

“We need to focus on job opportunities, great schools and improving our infrastructure,” Carmichael said.

He said differences in opinion among Senate Republicans over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act may have partially fueled the challenge for the presidency, a seat vacated when current President Bill Cole, R-Mercer, opted to run for governor.

“I will not deny there were probably some who used the RFRA issue as a reason to take another look at the leadership team,” Carmichael said.

Gaunch, a strong advocate of the RFRA bill in the 2016 session, said he had been encouraged by a number of senators to challenge Carmichael for the Republican nomination for president.

“I felt the job was more seeking me than I was seeking the job,” Gaunch said, adding, “The leadership gets to set the agenda. Most of them felt they would rather have me setting the agenda than him.”

During the regular session, Carmichael gave an impassioned floor speech against the RFRA bill (HB4012) that many credited for the bill’s defeat, saying, “I want the poor to be rich and the weak to be strong, and when we build walls we diminish that.”

Gaunch earlier gave a Senate floor speech contending the bill would not allow religious faith to be used as grounds to discriminate.

“It simply re-establishes a balancing tool for resolving cases where state action conflicts with religious practices,” Gaunch said at the time.

On Monday, he said it seems that it is acceptable to discriminate against evangelical Christians who support legislation such as RFRA.

“It’s the only group where it’s acceptable. There obviously are plenty of other groups that get discriminated against,” Gaunch said.

As to whether his supporters thought he would be more supportive of social issue legislation such as RFRA, Gaunch said, “You’d almost have to ask those people who supported me. That might be part of it, but I don’t think that’s the whole issue.”

During the campaign, Carmichael said his first priority would be job creation, and cited social issues such as passage of a so-called “bathroom bill” in North Carolina as being an economic disaster for the state, costing it business investments and events such as the NBA All-Star game.

On Monday, he reiterated that view, saying, “My position was very clear on RFRA. I’m in no way in favor of any type of discrimination.”

However, he noted that he will be Senate president, not a dictator.

“You have to advance the legislation that’s favored by the majority of senators,” he said.

Gaunch, a freshman senator elected in 2014, said his supporters believed he would provide a more representative Senate.

“People in Boone County should get equal representation as people from Jefferson County,” he said.

Gaunch said there will be no rift in the Senate over his challenge to Carmichael.

“Competition is good,” he said. “It makes us understand what is important to other members of our group.”

Ultimately, Carmichael said support for his nomination is an affirmation of the successes of Senate leadership over the past two years.

“While the other side of the aisle may disagree on a lot of what we did, the fact is we were very effective in running our agenda,” he said. “We’ve been very successful, so the thought was, keep the team in place.”

Under Cole, the Senate pushed through legislation — often on 18-16 party line votes — passing a state right-to-work law, eliminating prevailing wage rates and enacting tort reform measures — measures Senate leadership believes will make the state more “business friendly.”

Carmichael said he will appoint current Health and Human Resources Chairman Ryan Ferns, R-Ohio, as majority leader, and will retain the two major committee chairmen, Judiciary Chairman Charlie Trump, R-Morgan, and Finance Chairman Mike Hall, R-Putnam.

Staff writer Erin Beck contributed to this article. Reach Phil Kabler at [email protected], 304 348-1220, or follow @PhilKabler on Twitter.

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