Threatened Pritt tries to get off politically endangered list

Delegate Pritt’s party switch makes one less for dwindling West Virginia Democrats

Elliott Pritt, R-50th District, is pictured in his classroom during his run for a seat in the House of Delegates last fall. Pritt, who defeated embattled Republican Austin Haynes, on Monday morning switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. File Photo by The Fayette Tribune

If you are concerned that a dwindling number of a certain thing means that thing is going away, you call it endangered. This is something with which West Virginians are of course familiar. Eastern Cougars, flying squirrels, Peregrine Falcons, and various bats are just some of the endangered species in the Mountain State. For that matter, with the current demographic and population decline, there is an argument to be made that West Virginians themselves are at least a threatened, if not endangered species.

By the book, there are numbers involved in using the endangered species term. “A species is classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 70 percent and the cause of the decline is known,” explains National Geographic. “A species is also classified as endangered when its population has declined at least 50 percent and the cause of the decline is not known.”

By whatever definition you want to use, the elected office-holding West Virginia Democrat is an endangered species.

After the 2000 general election, when now-US Senator Shelly Moore Capito was the first Republican elected to the US Congress in 17 years, the Democratic Party had a 75 to 25 majority over their GOP colleagues in the House of Delegates and a 28 to 6 margin in the WV Senate. Capito took the seat vacated by Bob Wise as he defeated Republican Governor Cecil Underwood, starting a string of Democratic governors that would continue until Jim Justice switched to Team Red after eight months in office. Now, in the Year of Our Lord 2023, the Democratic Party has only 12 Democrats in the House of Delegates.

Or rather, had 12. Make that 11, with the announcement Monday that Delegate David Elliott Pritt (D-Fayette) is switching parties.

Outside the obvious of the GOP adding to its already overwhelming majority, there are several notable things here. Del. Pritt was an outlier already, winning by a scant 133 votes over the scandal-plagued Austin Haynes in 2022. The timing of the announcement is very notable, after the legislation session has ended and legislative interim meetings are…