Charleston Gazette Mail. April 12, 2024.
Editorial: GOP gubernatorial primary still a messy logjam
Polling has shown West Virginia Republican and independent voters aren’t particularly fired up about any one candidate for governor, and that trend continues in a new poll released with only about a month to go before the election.
A MetroNews poll conducted last week shows Attorney General Patrick Morrisey with a slim lead over Moore Capito among likely voters, 31% to 29%. However, the poll shows Capito with a lead over Morrisey among independents.
Nothing new there. Morrisey and Capito have been the leading candidates in a crowded field in every poll that’s been conducted so far. Both candidates have also been within the margin of error (in this case, 4.9%) of overtaking the other in most of those polls.
But the other consistent trend is that a sizable number of respondents still haven’t made up their minds. The MetroNews poll showed 10% of voters are undecided, and another 3% prefer someone other than Morrisey, Capito, car dealer Chris Miller or Secretary of State Mac Warner.
Granted, that’s way down from a poll released last year showing “undecided” leading the entire field, at 29%, just above Morrisey at 28%. Still, if the new poll accurately reflects likely voter opinions, that’s a huge chunk of voters for a race that’s so close, which throws the whole thing into a foggy logjam.
No one candidate is likely to pick up that entire bloc of undecided voters, and it’s far from certain whether the 3% who say they prefer another candidate will even vote or that they’ll pick someone who is on the ballot. But even if all of those voters fragment among the four candidates, where they go could make a huge difference at the top.
Interestingly, this new poll has Miller, son of Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., at 16% and Warner at 12%. Warner has consistently been around that number in a variety of polls, but Miller was previously polling in the single digits. Miller’s campaign has been pouring on the advertising as of late, while Warner’s camp has been mostly silent, at least in terms of TV ads bombarding viewers during the early evening local news slots.
As Morrisey, Miller and supposedly nonaffiliated political action committees have hammered each other over who is more supportive of Trump and who would ban transgender athletes harder (a somewhat meaningless issue, considering West Virginia already has a transgender sports ban), Capito is now running a more toned-down campaign (by 2024 standards, anyway).
Pollsters picked up on this to some degree, telling MetroNews that Morrisey and Miller seem to be fighting one another to secure far-right, hardline voters, while Capito (son of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.) is courting independents.
Next month’s GOP primary happens to be the last, at least for the foreseeable future, in which independents are allowed to vote and, despite recent registration gains by the GOP, roughly 30% of West Virginia voters are independents or registered as something other than Republican or Democrat. Those independents lean Republican and played a huge part in helping the GOP take control of the state after more than eight decades of Democratic Party dominance.
By wooing those voters, Capito might manage to slide through, if Morrisey and Miller continue to pursue a path of mutually assured political destruction.
Bear in mind that polls, especially those focusing on candidate popularity, are limited in what they reveal. The numbers can only infer what voters might be thinking, and sometimes offer even less as to why. For now, the undecided voters remain the most interesting factor in the horse race aspect of this ugly battle for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.
___
The Herald-Dispatch. April 11, 2024.
Editorial: Marshall holds the line on tuition increases as cost of living rises
The Marshall University Board of Governors picked a good day to vote on a tuition increase for in-state undergraduate and graduate students for the upcoming school year. “Good” in this case means the vote came the same day the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced cost-of-living numbers for March. Those numbers showed inflation is picking up again.
The Marshall board voted Wednesday to approve its fiscal year 2024-25 budget, which includes a 2.5% tuition increase for in-state students while holding tuition and fees constant for nonresident, international and metro students.
Matt Tidd, senior vice president for finance and chief financial officer, said it’s a $220 increase for undergraduate students and $230 for graduate students. The tuition increase was paired with a fee increase of 3% for housing and dining.
The same morning, the federal government said the Consumer Price Index increased 0.4% percent in March, the same increase as in February. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.5%. The rising cost of shelter and gasoline contributed more than half of the monthly increase in the index for all items.
The overall increase of 3.5% for the 12 months ending in March was larger than the 3.2% percent increase for the 12 months ending in February.
There are two ways of looking at this. Given the cost of operating a university, some sort of tuition increase may have been necessary. It’s difficult to say that with certainty without a deep dive into line items and obligations of each department. But the fact the increase was limited to the students who pay the least and that it was less than the year-over-year inflation rate for the cost of living is a mitigating factor in judging the need for the increase.
Marshall President Brad D. Smith commented, “(We are) just modestly raising the in-state, and that’s going to be below inflation. That’s because we are already the lowest price and we feel like that’s going to be an incredibly fair value for the students while we try to not outprice ourselves everywhere else.”
Four-year colleges and universities are in a tight spot, the same as their students are. Higher education has been on a steep upward trend in terms of tuition and fees for several years. Many potential students who consider the price of a four-year or an advanced degree are deciding it’s not worth the investment. When a large number of entry-level jobs require a degree but don’t pay enough to justify the investment, that discourages West Virginians and others from buying what higher education offers.
This relatively small and limited tuition increase shows schools are paying more attention to the needs and debt loads of their current and prospective students. Such attention is long overdue. As some commenters like to say, that which can’t go on forever, won’t.
Higher education has a big selling job on its hands to convince the market that the monetary and nonmonetary benefits of education outweigh the costs. It’s an increasingly tough sell, but holding the line on tuition is a good start.
___
Parkersburg News and Sentinel. April 15, 2024.
Editorial: Education: West Virginia must build on improvement
Fewer than 48% of 2023 public high school graduates in the Mountain State went on to attend college this year, according to a report by the state Higher Education Policy Commission.
Believe it or not, that’s an improvement, albeit a slight one.
According to a report by WV MetroNews, HEPC Director of Research and Analysis Zornista Georgieva said this year’s 47.4% is almost 1 percentage point higher compared to the 2022 graduating class. In fact, she said the data shows 36 of our state’s 55 counties showed increases in their college-going rates in 2023.
Meanwhile, despite their struggles, in-state institutions are still appealing to high school graduates: 41.2% of them choose in-state institutions, while only 6.2% go out-of-state.
Even a small improvement is encouraging in a state that struggles with education as ours does.
More encouraging still is the news that more low socioeconomic students also enrolled in college after graduation.
Educators appear to be making the difference on that front.
“I think this is a good trend that we’re looking at. I think it really speaks to the work that our high school counselors and high school staff are doing along with our institutions and our outreach folks,” Georgieva told MetroNews.
Lest anyone dismiss the improvement as inconsequential, imagine what could happen if we make the same small improvement this year, and the next …
We’ve got quite a way to go to get back to the 53.3% recorded for the 2012 high school graduation year — and wouldn’t it be nice if we could sail past that figure?
If we set our sights that high — and a small but loud contingent of those who despise education isn’t rewarded with more time in office — there’s no stopping us.
END