CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Former Wheeling Mayor and current U.S. Senate candidate Glenn Elliott is expanding his presence to the southern half of the state less than two months until the General Election.
Thursday Elliott opened up his new Charleston campaign headquarters at 3822 MacCorkle Avenue. He was holding two open house events at the location Thursday from noon until 2 p.m. and again from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Elliott said on 580 Live with Dave Allen Thursday that opening a new headquarters in Charleston is a way to expand his reach to all voting constituents.
Former Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott, running for U.S. Senate
“We’ve been running this campaign since January and running a statewide campaign from Wheeling is challenging just given the geographical location, and we’ve been spending so much time on the road, so we really felt that having a more central location for this final stretch made sense,” Elliott said.
He said being in a very visible area on MacCorkle, Elliott believes it will work well as a campaign headquarters location.
Elliott said that during the last 48 days until the November election, he feels it’s important to have a strong Southern West Virginia presence just as he does in the north.
“We need to be where the voters are and meeting them in their locations, and there’s a lot of voters down here, there’s a lot of voters in the Huntington area so we’re going to be down here a lot,” he said. “You know, the folks up in Wheeling have a pretty good idea of who I am, but I need to make sure the folks in this part of the state know as well.”
A Wheeling native, Elliott said he took his first job out of college as an intern for the late Senator Robert Byrd in the 1990s. Elliott worked for Byrd for five years and in that time, he said it really helped shape his political views and where he stands today.
After working and finishing law school in Washington D.C. for a number of years following that, Elliott moved back to Wheeling in 2009 with a focus to help revitalize the area.
He ran for mayor in 2016 and got elected before getting re-elected in 2020.
Elliott said he was planning on stepping aside from politics until Senator Joe Manchin announced he wasn’t going to seek re-election. He said this news inspired him to consider the senate seat for himself and what he could bring to the table.
“Number one, I used to work in the senate I know how it works, I know what you can do with that seat, and also I’ve worked with Senator Manchin and Senator Capito in my capacity as mayor of Wheeling, so I have an appreciation for what cities need,” Elliott said.
In addition, Elliott, a Democrat, believes he can send a better image to Washington than Governor Jim Justice can, who’s also running for the senate seat as a Republican. Despite Justice’s popularity as governor, Elliott said he doesn’t think he has what it takes to represent the state as a U.S. senator.
“Our state has an image problem there to begin with, sending someone there who is so riddled with ethical lapses and financial improprieties, and sending someone there who quite frankly doesn’t put in the work, the governor rarely shows up here in Charleston to do the job he currently has,” he said.
With West Virginia being an increasingly red state, Elliott said he understands many people may be dissuaded from giving him their vote simply because he has a D after his name, but he reminds people that for the last 65 years, the state has been led by two democrats who often walked away from their own party on many issues– a motion he said he would do the same if need be.
He said he’s not afraid to stand up against his own party if they’re not supporting West Virginia, and he wants voters to know that being a democrat doesn’t define him and he doesn’t want it to let people define him by that either.
“The National Democratic Party is not helping me in this race, I’m doing this race on my own and certainly if I get elected I’m not going to be beholden to anybody,” Elliott said. “I identify as a democrat because I grew up with pictures of Franklin Roosevelt on my grandparent’s wall, democratic party to me is the party of underdogs, the working class, that’s what I am, I think sometimes the party has drifted away from that in the way it’s perceived, I think we’ve let republicans define us in the way that we’re not.”
Elliott said he got things done in Wheeling in a bipartisan way and he would do the same in Washington.
He encourages people to stop by his new Charleston headquarters and get to know more about him as well as visit his website at Elliottforwv.com.
Election Day is November 5.