Filing for the West Virginia presidential primaries closed on Saturday, January 30. Candidates qualify by filing fee of $2,500. The Democratic ballot will list six candidates and the Republican ballot will list eleven. The previous highest number of presidential candidates in a West Virginia Republican presidential primary had been eight.
The six Democrats are: Hillary Clinton, Rocky De La Fuente, Paul T. Farrell Jr, Keith Judd, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders. The eleven Republicans are: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, David E. Hall, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump.
Paul T. Farrell, one of the lesser-known Democrats, had not qualified in any other state’s presidential primary this year so far. He lives in Huntington, West Virginia.
With O’Malley and Huckabee already out, and West Virginia’s primary so late, one has to wonder how many of these candidates will actually still be running in May. Again, a better system would be to have to people running for presidential electors in the primary (rather than being determined in the summer at state convention), and then these winning candidates all out campaigning for votes locally rather than all tha national media hype.