Moore, Parsi meet in debate for 2nd Congressional District
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With 20 days to go before November's midterm election, Mountain State congressional candidates Riley Moore and Ace Parsi took on the issues, and each other, in a televised debate in Martinsburg on Wednesday.
Moore, the former state treasurer and nephew of current West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, is running for reelection in the 2nd district, which takes in the Eastern Panhandle city, plus Morgantown, Fairmont, Clarksburg and other towns in the north-central climes.
The Republican incumbent touted the more than $130 million in federal dollars he's helped bring to the district this year, he said, through his work with lawmakers in opposite parties on appropriations committees.
Monies that are bringing jobs and shoring up needed infrastructure repairs in the district - and made possible, he said, by his ability to reach out across the aisle.
"That means roads, water and bringing in new jobs," he said, "particularly in defense and aerospace. We had a lot of success."
Parsi, a Democrat whose family fled the Iranian regime in Tehran for the U.S. when he was a little boy, is a community advocate who has worked over the years with groups and organizations from the Cato Institute to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
"I actually love talking to people who don't agree with me," he said - of his ability to build consensus among diverse groups.
The candidates sparred and jabbed in the nearly 45-minute session with the sweeping One Big Beautiful Bill Act taking its turn for a close-up in front of the cameras of WRNR.
Moore defended the sweeping measure fronted by President Donald Trump, saying the legislation kills taxes and creates jobs.
"We worked with the small business community around the state of West Virginia, and around the country for that matter, to lessen the tax burden on those businesses, those job creators, the people who are actually putting their lives into the businesses which employ so many," the incumbent said.
Parsi, though, countered and said working-class West Virginians are now facing a slow-motion train wreck in the coming decade as the Big Beautiful Bill comes due.
Medicaid and monies from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - or SNAP, as the outlay is commonly known - will be especially vulnerable.
"This is the biggest corporate tax giveaway in history," Parsi said.
Both men concluded the debate by chiding one another for the way they've approached their respective campaigns.
Moore called Parsi a "professional protester" who regularly pickets his Morgantown office. Parsi said he talks to residents from the district daily "who don't feel seen" by their congressional representative.