PARKERSBURG — The Republican Party nominee for treasurer of West Virginia hopes to flip the statewide office to the GOP.
Riley Moore, the Majority Leader in the West Virginia House of Delegates, is running against Democratic incumbent John Perdue in the November general election.
Perdue is running for a seventh term. Too many, said Moore, who is running on a platform that includes term limits for statewide officeholders.
“We need new blood, new ideas,” Moore said.
Moore is in Parkersburg for the Wood County Republican Party annual picnic at Buzzy Dils Park in Vienna, meetings with local officials and the opening Saturday of the county GOP headquarters in Vienna.
The most telling difference, according to Moore, between Perdue and Moore is Perdue is a delegate for Democrat Joe Biden and Moore is a delegate for President Donald Trump.
“I support Donald Trump,” Moore said.
Moore said he is running on modernizing the office, making sure it operates in the most effective and financially efficient way and improving transparency, including about where and how much the state has invested. He supports an audit of the department to determine where efficiency can improve and if there are funds that can turned over to the state treasury.
Allowing unlimited terms deters transparency and accountability, he said.
“I am going to push for term limits,” Moore said.
Born in Morgantown, he was a welder at a quarry then became a welder at a defense subcontractor.
He received his undergraduate degree in government and international politics from George Mason University in Virginia and a master’s in strategic security studies from the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.
Moore in 2016 was elected to the House of Delegates to represent the 67th District in the Eastern Panhandle. He was named assistant majority whip in 2017 and majority leader in 2018.
He is a director at Textron in support of U.S. Marine Corps helicopter programs. Moore lives in Harpers Ferry with his wife, Mina, and daughter, Lena.