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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part two in a four-part series of public policy interviews with the top four Republican candidates for governor of West Virginia. Listen to the full interviews by subscribing to the Mountain State Views podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and most major podcast platform.
CHARLESTON -- Huntington businessman Chris Miller is not new to politics, though as a Republican candidate for governor of West Virginia, this is his first time stepping out onto the stage. Now, he hopes to get his message out while competing with seasoned political opponents.
Miller was one of the first Republican candidates to announce for governor, filing pre candidacy paperwork with the Secretary of State's Office at the end of 2021.
Miller is an officer in the Dutch Miller Auto Group, a chain of car dealerships throughout most of southern West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Miller also owns several other businesses.
He is one of the sons of 3rd District Congresswoman Carol Miller, R-W.Va., now in her third term in Congress. He also stepped down as the chairman of the West Virginia Faith and Family Coalition in March to focus on his gubernatorial run. He founded the organization in November 2022. Much of Miller's political work has been behind-the scenes, helping other candidates raise money.
Miller might be most known for his comedic car dealership commercials that air on many West Virginia television stations. But when it comes to his candidacy for governor, Miller is all business. He sees West Virginia's multi-decade population loss as a major concern for the state's future.
"The sad part about West Virginia is that our No. 1 export is not coal, it's not natural gas, it's not lumber. Our No. 1 exports are people, it's our educated brothers and sisters," Miller said. "If we don't reverse that trend right now, it's going to be a bad day in the future. So that's why we have to get involved and do this right now."
While he acknowledged West Virginia's short-term successes such as record-breaking tax revenue surpluses, major tax cuts, low unemployment, multiple large-scale economic development announcements and increased tourism numbers, Miller is more concerned about the long-term effects that continued population loss will economically have on the state.
"I look at this as short-term versus long-term," Miller said. "Short term, we've got a lot of things going the right way with our economy and a lot of things are clicking. There's business development, there's growth … but our state is facing a serious set of financial challenges that need to be addressed. And it's not really conducive for the four-year election cycle to kind of fix. And that's the primary reason why I'm getting involved."
Miller sees a potential demographic cliff in West Virginia's future, with an older population, younger residents leaving the state for job opportunities and fewer children being born in the state. Without a strong tax base, Miller believes the state could see major budget issues that could affect the state's bond ratings and increase the cost of government services.
"Everything that we need to do from this moment on needs to be focused on growing our state's population to avert the financial catastrophe that's coming down the pike," Miller said. "Business growth, business development, really being forward-thinking and promoting our state and also doing everything that we can to tweak that economic dial to make sure that we are very, very pro and very, very friendly to growth. We have to be, because if we don't, it's going be a bad day for our state."
To help avoid the effects of the potential demographic cliff he sees, Miller said he wants to focus on making the state more business-friendly and a place where job creators can come and grow. With West Virginia's poverty rate remaining one of the worst in the nation, Miller believes new job opportunities with better wages can be a key to helping raise people out of poverty and creating a tax base.
Miller also believes focusing state resources onto helping families, such as helping keep children and families together and decreasing the number of children in the foster care system, can also help generate opportunities for families.
"You think about the foster care system. It is overrun and it is very, very poorly funded," Miller said. "We have a lot of young kids that have been born in this state that do not have the opportunity. because they don't have a sound family. If you break down what a lot of this starts and ends from, it starts and ends from a deterioration to the family unit. And so that really needs to be a focus as well.
"So aside from economic growth and development, which is the fastest and easiest way to fix a lot of these problems, we really have to focus on families because that family unit, we're seeing it not only in West Virginia but around the country, is starting to deteriorate. And we have to have a solid foundation there," Miller continued.
As a businessman, Miller understands the need to balance a budget. But West Virginia had a total budget of more than $16 billion in revenue across multiple streams and budgets, including general revenue, lottery, excess lottery, and federal funding. Just in fiscal year 2023 alone, the state's general revenue fund brought in more than $6.4 billion, resulting in a $1.8 billion surplus at the end of June.
After various expenditures at the beginning of the new fiscal year in July and an August special session filled with multiple supplemental appropriations, the estimated unappropriated balance available to the state is more than $157.6 million. Miller said the state needs to do a better job of saving surplus tax revenue in preparation for a future when the demographic cliff kicks in and tax revenues decrease.
"The most important thing that we should do is realize that the surplus probably needs to be conserved in a much more future-forward thinking way to then impact the budgetary issues that we're going to face eight, 10 and 12 years down the road," Miller said.
Another issue Miller understands is hiring employees and making sure they are paid well in order to retain them. West Virginia, on the other hand, has major shortages of certified teachers, social workers, and correctional officers. Miller said he would utilize technology to review the state's public worker shortages to better allocate resources to areas with shortages while cutting areas that might have too many workers or redundancies.
"A lot of that has to do with how we structure it through technology, which we are not up to speed when it comes to the technology and communication department-by-department and agency-by-agency," Miller said. "The most efficient way that we can help the legislative branch and the executive branch manage is to leverage a little bit of technology."
Miller believes fixing education in West Virginia is important, whether that means supporting more school choice options or finding ways for parents to become more engaged in the success of their children. But he believes the state spends an exorbitant amount of money on public education with very little of that money making it to teachers and classrooms.
According to the Reason Foundation K-12 Education Spending Spotlight, there was a 15% increase in total revenue (federal, state and local) per pupil over 18 years adjusted for inflation, between 2002 and 2020, from $12,350 per pupil to $14,163 per pupil. Miller said very little of the money is directly helping students.
"We can restructure our education budget, keep the spending the same, and provide more revenue for our teachers who are at the end of the day the ones interfacing with the customers who are the students and the parents, and get rid of that middle layer of bureaucracy that soaks up so much of the budget before the money flows into the classroom to compensate the people doing the real work and to make sure that the resources are in front of the students that need the food, that need the technology and need everything else," Miller said.
When it comes to the substance use disorder crisis in West Virginia, Miller has a very personal experience to share. Miller is a recovering alcoholic, having remained sober since 2004.
"I know the struggle, I know how hard it is and I know what our West Virginian brothers and sisters are going through when it comes to fighting that addiction, getting out of that addiction, doing everything that you absolutely positively can to make sure not relapse and move forward in becoming a productive member of society," Miller said "It's hard. It is. Detox is real and it's hard going through that experience of trying to rewire the pathways in the brain of the addict."
Miller believes more needs to be done to crack down on the influx of fentanyl, the base ingredients of which are made in China, with the finished product making its way across the U.S. southern border. He also believes that more resources need to be directed toward detox, rehabilitation and helping return those with substance use disorder back into society.
"One of the No. 1 reasons for relapse is lack of economic opportunity or lack of economic mobility," Miller said. "One of the things I think we're missing, not only as a state but as a country when it comes to this, is providing some sort of a tangible rehabilitation job training, especially in a shortage across the country of trades. We haven't taught a generation of kids how to do stuff. And there's a huge demand for all those things. Not only in our state but across the country."
In all of Miller's answers to public policy questions, he kept returning to his concerns about West Virginia's potential demographic cliff and continued population loss. While inward migration to the state has ticked up slightly in the last year, some believe the continued lean into socially conservative policies and culture war issues by Republican leaders is a driver of recent population losses.
Miller said the state's political demographics that led to a majority Republican voter registration in 2021, and following in the footsteps of red states like Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, could make West Virginia an appealing place to move to for people residing in Democratic blue states that no longer match their politics.
"People want to be around other people they see as similar to them," Miller said. "There is a drive and a focus inside of our country for being around other people with conservative values. In West Virginians we're full of conservative values. We believe in the family. We believe in life. We're pro-Second Amendment. We also don't have a relatively high crime rate. We take care of each other. And all of that stuff matches up with what other people are looking for when it comes to the hills, the trees, the rivers, the streams, the high quality of life and the low cost of living."