Steve Harrison, a former delegate and senator and the clerk of the House of Delegates for the last 10 years, will retire this year when a new clerk is elected Jan. 8. (Lori Kersey | West Virginia Watch)
For more than two decades of Steve Harrison’s life, the bang of the gavel at the start of each regular session of the West Virginia Legislature marked the beginning of a busy 60 days. This year, it will mark the end of his legislative career, at least for now.
Harrison, who’s been clerk of the House of Delegates for a decade and previously served five terms as a delegate and one as a senator, will retire this year, wrapping up a total of 24 years of service in the statehouse.
“Even though this job and politics in general can be challenging at times and frustrating, I am very thankful, and it’s been a blessing to have a lot of very interesting and memorable opportunities at this Capitol,” Harrison said. “I’m very thankful to have been able to serve as a delegate and a senator and clerk — very, very different roles.
“To get to be a part of the history of this state and to do things to help make the state better, it’s truly been a blessing and very interesting,” he said.
Originally from Sissonville, Harrison’s interest in politics started as a student at Brown University in Rhode Island, where he also played football. During summers, he worked in what was then the state’s Criminal Justice and Highway Safety Office, a part of the governor’s Community and Industrial Development Office. In that role, Harrison traveled to all 52 county jails in the state, checking records to make sure they weren’t housing juveniles with adults.
When he graduated college in the spring of 1990, Harrison came back to West Virginia and started working in the banking industry. Wanting to get involved in politics, Harrison said he contacted John Overington, a Republican who represented Berkeley County who would become the longest serving member of the House of Delegates.
“I asked him how I could get more involved. And he said, ‘Why don’t you run for the House of Delegates?’ And I thought, well, someday I would like to do that, but I was just getting started in my career. I was just getting ready to get married, and wasn’t really thinking of running at that time.”
But as it so happened, legislative redistricting had changed Kanawha County from “one big 12-member district,” to three districts, including a four member district covering Sissonville, Cross Lanes, Elk River and St. Albans. There were no incumbent House members running in the district, he said.
“I went to my supervisor at the bank and asked them if I could run for the House of Delegates,” Harrison said. “And they took a little while to give me an answer. And they probably thought, ‘Well, we’ll let him run. He won’t get elected.’ And they OK’d that I could, that I could file.”
Harrison was 25 when he filed to run and 26 when he took office as a member of the House, making him the youngest that term by just a few months.
In the Democrat-majority House, Harrison and the three other Republicans who represented his district became known as the Four Horsemen. The nickname was attributed to former House speaker Chuck Chambers in Harrison’s nomination for clerk.
Besides Harrison, the original Four Horsemen included the late Dick Henderson, Ron Walters and Jay Nesbitt. The four had a lot of the same positions and a similar focus on cutting taxes.
The name was meant to be negative, Harrison said, but they turned it on its head.
“Dick Henderson, he had worked at Carbide for a long time in public relations. So he kind of took that and ran with it,” Harrison said. “Folks came to know us in that way, and in a positive way. And I still get folks that will mention the Four Horsemen. It became pretty well known in local politics that they called us that.”
One of the four’s more colorful antics was a 1995 demonstration in support of cutting taxes during a floor debate. The episode was captured as part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s show “The Legislature Today,” which Harrison added to his YouTube channel.
Addressing the House, Henderson asks the three others to stand and then declares that “The time to cut our ties to high taxes is now — this year. There is no good reason to wait. So let us cut.”
He and the other men then cut their neckties, drawing laughter and a few groans. “Could you aim those scissors a little higher?” a voice says. The ties are then presented to Finance Chair Bob Kiss.
“Back then, we were really concerned with the level of taxation,” Harrison said. “And one of the things that I focused on quite a bit during my time in the Legislature was reducing taxes, and especially the sales tax on food.”
In his last term in the House, Harrison was encouraged to run for Senate, something that initially didn’t interest him. But polling written about in the Charleston Gazette suggested he might do better in an election than the incumbent running for the seat.
“And that was just sort of confirmation that, yes, maybe, maybe I should run for this,” Harrison said. “Maybe I would have a good opportunity to get elected to the Senate. So I filed and got elected to the Senate in 2002, defeating the incumbent senator that year.”
After four years in the Senate, as he approached 40 years old, Harrison decided not to run for reelection in 2006.
“I didn’t really see another step I wanted to take politically right then that was available, and I had a potential opportunity at the bank,” Harrison said.
In 2014, Harrison unsuccessfully ran to represent the 2nd Congressional District of West Virginia in the House of Representatives, losing in the primary to Alex Mooney.
In 2015, then House Speaker Tim Armstead asked him to be clerk of the state House of Delegates.
Republicans that year became the majority party in both the House and the Senate for the first time in more than 80 years.
In a statement to West Virginia Watch, Armstead, now chief justice of the state Supreme Court, called Harrison a trusted friend and a colleague for more than three decades.
“When I became speaker in 2015, my fellow delegates and I recognized that Steve’s 14 years of service in the House and Senate, as well as his professional experience, would be invaluable to the effective management of the House,” Armstead said. “I had the pleasure to work with him in managing the floor sessions each day of the legislative session when I served as Speaker.
“Beyond his institutional knowledge and experience, anyone who has had the privilege of working with Steve knows he is a person of strong faith who has a tremendous respect for the people of our state and serves them with the greatest integrity, honesty and character,” he said. “He also possesses a unique, lighthearted sense of humor that is appreciated by all who know him.”
Harrison said going from lawmaker to clerk was a big adjustment. As clerk, he isn’t involved in policy but is there to process bills and deal with paperwork, he said.
“It’s a very, very different role,” he said. “And you go from being, as a senator or a delegate, you’re trying to influence what the policy is, to clerk, where you’re just you’re trying to ensure that things run smoothly.”
While his role has been nonpartisan for the last decade, Harrison said he’s been pleased overall with the direction from the state’s Republican leaders in the Legislature.
“With the volume of bills that we pass, if I were voting, I think the vast majority of them I would vote for,” he said. “There would be some bills that I would not vote for. But as clerk you’re there to process the bills, whether you agree or disagree with them.”
While his focus as a lawmaker was tax reduction, Harrison said his approval extends to some of the social-issue bills that Republicans have focused on in recent years. He said he considers himself a “big picture conservative.”
“I think all policy has a broader impact than what some may realize,” he said. “One of the things I did when I was a member because one of my focuses was on reducing taxes, I consistently voted against the budget because I believed at that time we were spending more than we should, and by spending that amount, it contributed to the high tax rates. So I would always try to be consistent in my voting. If I was going to promote lower taxes, then I was going to vote against high spending. And certainly, in looking at my record, I was both a fiscal conservative and a social conservative.”
While Republicans were few during Harrison’s time as a legislator — when he started as a delegate, he was one of 21 GOP members in the 100-member House — he said that the state’s politics have always leaned conservative.
“Even back then, a lot of the Democratic legislators voted fairly conservatively, but because of the area they were in, it was maybe a traditionally Democratic area, they ran as Democrats instead of Republicans,” he said. “So I’ve been pleased to see more conservative policies implemented.”
Among his accomplishments as a lawmaker, Harrison said he’s proud that during his last special session as a senator, lawmakers voted to pass legislation that put in place steps to decrease the state sales tax on food to 3%. Subsequent legislation eliminated it.
“I thought that was a regressive tax, and it was also a tax that I think put us at a competitive [dis]advantage with surrounding states that had lower or they did not have the food tax rate that we had,” Harrison said. “So that was one of the things I was very pleased to be a part of helping get that eliminated.”
Among favorite memories in the role is the time in 2021 when the gavel he was using to call the session to order broke and came apart, with the head landing on a ledge beside the House’s clock. It was an older gavel and he hit it “pretty hard,” he said.
“I was laughing so hard that it took me a moment to be able to say what I needed to say to open the session,” Harrison said. “But that was quite memorable and funny.” Harrison kept the broken gavel behind glass in a cabinet in his office.
In 2022 Harrison read Gov. Jim Justice’s state of the state address because the governor was sick with COVID-19.
“After he recovered, he later came and made a speech, but his actual message to the Legislature, I got to read that,” Harrison said. “So that was, that was a neat experience.”
Another time, during one of two statewide teachers strikes in 2018 or 2019, when delegates approved a teacher pay raise bill, Harrison walked the legislation from the House to the Senate.
“There was, of course, a huge crowd in the hallway, out between the House and the Senate, and they realized I had the bill,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ve done all these political activities and sports activities, and probably the biggest cheer I ever received was for carrying the pay raise bill over from the House to the Senate.’”
Harrison said he’s also proud of a $2 million renovation project to House chambers, which was completed in December 2023, the first major renovation to the room since 1995.
Harrison, now 58, said he decided to retire from the Legislature as he reached qualifying age. His twin son and daughter are in their early teenage years, and his father, 88, has had health issues.
In the short term, Harrison said he’s looking forward to some time off with his wife, children and father.
“I don’t think I’m going to be fully, permanently retired the rest of my life,” he said. “But as far as immediate job plans, I don’t have anything immediate.”
In a written statement, House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, told West Virginia Watch that Harrison made a huge mark on West Virginia.
“His devotion to his family and creating a better future for them in West Virginia during his service in the House and the Senate is a lasting example for all of us serving today,” Hanshaw said. “We will miss Steve’s counsel and guidance, and we wish him and his family a wonderful start to the next chapter in their lives.”
Harrison hasn’t ruled out another role in politics, though that may not be anytime soon.
“I could see the possibility of me maybe running for something again at some point, but as far as another job or another campaign, I don’t think, in the short term, at least. But maybe a little bit down the road,” Harrison said. “Unless something comes up that’s just too good to pass up, I really hope to take some time off.”
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