Thompson wants to ‘bring a voice back’ to Legislature
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ELKINS -- Former Delegate Cody Thompson is seeking to return to the West Virginia Legislature, recently filing to run for the District 67 House of Delegates seat.
"I wanted to bring a voice back to our district and our area in the legislature," Thompson told The Inter-Mountain Friday. "I just feel that right now, our current representative isn't representing everyone. He's more focused on national issues that have nothing to do with West Virginia, and I want to get back in there and work for West Virginia and our actual district."
Thompson said he's planning to hit the campaign trail hard.
"I'm just going to go out there and do what I always do, and that's work hard," he said. "I'm going to go out and talk to people, meet people, and do what I can to get my name out there, and get people to understand that I'm going to work for them no matter if they are Democrat, Republican or Independent – I'm going to work for them and the district."
Thompson's filing sets up a campaign rematch with incumbent Republican Delegate Elias Coop-Gonzalez, who defeated Thompson for the District 67 seat in 2022.
With Thompson being the only Democrat to file for the seat this year, and Coop-Gonzalez the only Republican, the two are destined to face off again in the General Election in November.
"It was a very nasty, nasty race (in 2022)," said Thompson, who lives on the same street in Elkins as Coop-Gonzalez. "I'm just going to focus on doing what I can and see where it goes."
In 2023, Thompson won a Fifth Ward seat on Elkins City Council in the Municipal Election.
During Thompson's campaign for City Council, Coop-Gonzalez took to social media to urge residents to vote against Thompson in the election. Gonzalez continued to criticize Thompson after the election, drawing negative comments from dozens of residents on social media.
If Thompson is elected to the House of Delegates, he will have to walk away from his Elkins City Council position.
Elkins City Clerk Sutton Stokes told The Inter-Mountain Friday that Thompson can remain on city council while running for the delegate seat, but if elected he will have to step down from council.
"In the City Charter that was updated in 2021, there's a prohibition against City Council members holding another office," Stokes said. "It says that during a term of office, no council member shall hold any other elected public office. So he can run for something else, but at the moment he gets sworn in, he would be required to resign from council."
Stokes said if Thompson wins the District 67 seat, Elkins City Council will appoint someone else to carry out the rest of Thompson's term.
"Council has a whole internal process laid out for how they would seek applications and consider those applications," Stokes said.
Thompson said he enjoys being an Elkins City Councilman and working to help city residents.
"Serving on city council is a very important job, and if this election doesn't work out, I will continue to serve out my term (on council)," he said. "But I definitely think having a true voice in the state Legislature is a very important and true position as well, and feel like it's solely lacking right now, especially for our area.
"We have some great people on council doing some really good things and it is in good hands, but we really need somebody at the local level to step up and be the voice in the state Legislature."