CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s attorney general, has now benefited from more than $6.4 million in outside spending by the Republican Attorneys General Association in his bid to remain in office.
The national group, which is funded by corporate interests and operated by Morrisey’s former campaign manager, has thrown in an additional $1 million in the past five days to help the Republican incumbent protect his seat from Democratic Party challenger Doug Reynolds.
Reynolds, a state delegate, businessman and millionaire from Huntington, has countered the wave of spending by RAGA in recent months by dumping about $3 million of his own money into his run to unseat Morrisey, according to state campaign finance reports.
But as the campaign to become West Virginia’s attorney general has slogged on, with a constant stream of political attack ads, public records suggest that RAGA is beginning to outpace Reynolds’ self-funded campaign.
Documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission shows Reynolds’ campaign has purchased several hundred thousand dollars worth of political advertisements in recent days, during the same time that RAGA was reporting its $1 million in spending with the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office.
Like every other Republican campaign in West Virginia, Morrisey and RAGA’s messages have been focused on trying to paint Reynolds as a close ally of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. They have pointed out that Reynolds donated money to Clinton’s campaign in 2007.
Reynolds has used his political spending to run advertisements about Morrisey’s ties to opioid wholesalers that were sued by former Attorney General Darrell McGraw for dumping millions of pain pills into West Virginia.
In the most recent variation of those ads, the Reynolds campaign shortened and replayed a CBS News story that reviewed Gazette-Mail stories about Morrisey and his wife previously lobbying for one of those pill shippers, Cardinal Health.
Reach Andrew Brown at [email protected], 304-348-4814 or follow @Andy_Ed_Brown on Twitter.