WEST VIRGINIA’S
CONSERVATIVE CHAMPION
From her first days in public office, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito has listened and focused her work in Congress on the concerns and needs of West Virginians. That understanding has enabled her to champion solutions that advance growth and opportunity and protect Mountaineer values and culture.
In 2014, voters not only elected the first woman and first Republican in over fifty years to the U.S. Senate, they set records when Capito won 62% of the vote and carried all 55 counties. Her strength at the ballot box and efforts recruiting and supporting legislative candidates help deliver the Republican takeover of the state legislature for the first time in decades and flipped a congressional seat making the entire House delegation Republican.
Capito’s 2020 reelection to the U.S. Senate with 70% of the vote set a new record for total votes and resulted in Republicans sweeping the U.S. House races, delivering up a supermajority in both the state Senate and House, and for the first time in modern history winning all six statewide executive offices. President Donald Trump endorsed her as “a rock-solid conservative and a fierce advocate for West Virginia” because of her support for his tax cuts and votes to confirm all three of his U.S. Supreme Court nominees that delivered a conservative majority.
Read MoreHer Republican Senate colleagues unanimously elected her to fill the fourth highest position in Senate leadership, the Chair of the Republican Policy Committee. As Chair, Capito works closely with President Trump to pass his agenda for which he endorsed her again for re-election – calling her a “tireless” champion for tax cuts, border security, and the Second Amendment. In the 119th Congress, Capito serves as a member of the Senate’s Appropriations, Commerce, and Environment and Public Works committees to help West Virginia overcome the opioid crisis and expand broadband access. As Chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, she helps set policy on public infrastructure projects and roll back regulatory overreach such as ending California’s electric vehicle mandate.
Capito’s public service began in 1996 when Kanawha County voters elected her as one of only two Republicans in a seven-member district in the West Virginia House of Delegates. As a new Delegate in a chamber where Democrats held a three-to-one majority, she found success listening and then building coalitions around education, job training, and transportation. In 2000, Capito won an upset victory in West Virginia’s 2nd U.S. House District as the only Republican in the delegation. Over seven terms as a majority and a minority member, she championed the needs of her district, securing federal funding for highways and bridges and the safety of our nation at the U.S. southern border.
Capito grew up in West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle before earning a B.S. in Zoology from Duke University and an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia. She and her husband, Charles L. Capito, Jr., live in Charleston, where they raised their three children, Charles (Laura), Moore (Liberty), and Shelley (Colin Macleod). They are the proud grandparents to Celia, Charlie, Eliza, Rose, Arch, Macaulay, Lewis, Thomas, and Holt.
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