Photo Courtesy/West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals Justices of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals will decide whether to throw out a lower court ruling that determined the Ohio County Republican Executive Committee had no right to prevent Dolph Santorine from being seated on the committee following a 2022 election.

CHARLESTON — A fight over whether to seat a person elected in 2022 to the Ohio County Republican Executive Committee but placed in the wrong district continued with arguments Tuesday before the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

Justices heard arguments Tuesday morning in the state Supreme Court chambers at the State Capitol Building in the Ohio County REC vs. Dolph Santorine.

Elgine McArdle, the former chairwoman of the Ohio County committee and former chairwoman of the West Virginia Republican Party before resigning in January to run for a seat on the state Intermediate Court of Appeals, filed an appeal to the Supreme Court after the Ohio County Circuit Court ruled in Santorine’s favor in 2022.

Santorine and McArdle have been locked in a legal battle for nearly two years after the county executive committee refused to seat Santorine following his election to the committee in May 2022. Santorine sought election to the county party committee for the 2nd magisterial district.

Due to an error by the county, Santorine was placed in the 1st District. Ohio County officials acknowledged their error and certified the 2nd district election for Santorine, but the county party determined that it could not seat him for that district and encouraged him to submit his name for an appointment for an available seat for the 1st district.

Santorine – a Wheeling-based businessman, political organizer and previous candidate for House of Delegates who challenged McArdle for the state party leadership two years ago – refused and filed suit in Ohio County Circuit Court, asking the court to mandate that the county party committee seat him. McArdle and the committee appealed the lower court decision to the Supreme Court at the end of 2022.

During Tuesday’s oral arguments, McArdle said the committee was following state law requiring those elected to an office to reside in the district they are elected in. McArdle said that at the time Santorine filed for office and won the seat, and at the time of the mandamus case, he was considered a resident of the 1st district, though the maps were later corrected to place Santorine in the 2nd district.

“Mr. Santorine’s physical address at the time he filed and his certificate of candidacy for the Ohio County Republican Executive Committee was in magisterial district 1,” McArdle said. “It continued in magisterial district 1 until the date of the election. … Assuming that it is true that this was a mistake by somebody else, that certainly is not the Ohio County Republican Executive Committee.”

Santorine’s attorney, Martin Sheehan, said the executive committee had no authority to not seat his client.

“At that point of time, he had been deprived of a seat to which he was entitled, to which he was declared the winner,” Sheehan said. “I think the actions of the executive committee in trying to boot him off the committee were arbitrary.”

Justice William Wooton questioned McArdle about whether the committee followed the proper legal remedies. There was no challenge to Santorine’s 2nd District victory during canvassing by the Ohio County Commission and no challenge to Santorine’s residency in circuit court. And following the correction of the magisterial maps, Santorine was once again placed in the 2nd District and seated by the county committee, where he now serves as committee secretary.

“In this instance, the county executive committee made the determination on its own, in essence forgoing a challenge to residency in the courts and overruling, in essence, the decision of the county commission certifying the election,” Wooton said.

“We didn’t have an opportunity to do that,” McArdle said. “Mandamus was filed prior to contesting it. The mandamus was filed almost immediately.”

Justice C. Haley Bunn asked McArdle why the case isn’t moot now that Santorine has been properly placed in the 2nd District and seated on the county committee.

“You can see that as we sit here today, the new maps putting Mr. Santorine in District 2 have been duly and properly adopted,” Bunn said. “How is this case not moot?”

McArdle argued that the committee offered Santorine an appointed vacant position as representative of the 1st District which he refused to accept. But Sheehan said accepting that alternative appointment would have been inappropriate for Santorine.

“He was not going to fall for a false promise to be seated in a place he didn’t live,” Sheehan said. “He wanted to be a representative for the place he lived, Anything else would have placed him in long-term jeopardy on holding the seat that he has, so he did not fall for that. … We like to follow the law.”

Chief Justice Tim Armstead and Justice John Hutchison pointed out that once the magisterial maps were corrected, Santorine would not have been qualified to sit in the 1st District seat.

“If you had offered him District 1 and he would have accepted it, then at the time the maps were corrected, he would have been ineligible to serve,” Hutchison said.

“If he didn’t actually reside in District 1, which was ultimately determined, was it an adequate remedy to put him in District 1? That’s my question,” Armstead said. “Wasn’t the only adequate remedy to determine where he actually lived and place him in that?”

The county committee was also held in contempt of court for not seating Santorine following the lower court decision, though that contempt order has been stayed pending the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal. Answering a question from Justice Beth Walker, McArdle said a ruling by the Supreme Court would at least state that the committee’s actions were correct at the time.

“The only relief this court can offer you here sitting here today is essentially an advisory opinion that the executive committee made the right call along the way,” Walker said.

“Should this court not set aside the mandamus, we would be held in contempt. That’s the long and short of it,” McArdle said. “The mandamus was improperly issued. That’s our sole issue that we filed on appeal.”