'60 Days' is back. Well, it's about to be.

Happy New Year!

Today is January 1st, 2024.

The Second Regular Session of the 86th West Virginia Legislature begins next week, which means Giles and I are starting the new year a little anxious. We’ve been looking under the hood of this newsletter, planning to rev things back up after letting it sit dormant these many months.

We still have some fine tuning to do, but leave us a comment and let us know if you’re down for it. We could use the encouragement.

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Before we get too deep into things, a blanket apology:

We had hoped to catapult 60 Days into a cornerstone of West Virginia news media this year. Hell, we effectively promised you as much. But 2023 had other plans for us and we’re sorry — some things came up.

Dave spent a month in Europe this past summer and since then he’s been going through withdrawals from high-quality croissants, Döner Kebabs and Augustiner Helles Lager. (If you happen to know someone with a couch in Berlin that he might be able to crash on for a week or two — or maybe forever — he’ll book a flight immediately. No, seriously, if you know a benevolent soul in Berlin, pass it along.)

Here’s Dave with the Augstiner Helles. It was rather unclear whether it’s actuallly legal to drink while using public transit in Berlin, but he saw other people doing it and they sell beer everywhere, so it was worth the risk.

And Giles wound up taking on some extra duties for NPR’s Newscast Unit that consumed a few months of his life. (Don’t worry, if you follow along with his newsletter dedicated to the antebellum writer and artist Porte Crayon, you’ll know he got some fly fishing in, too.)

There’s also these 24/7 network news work schedules to contend with. Between the two of us on any given week — we’re up all night working six overnight shifts, keeping the endless conveyor belt of international news moving and onto your public radio station at the top-of-the-hour.

And, well:

We each have our respective significant others to keep happy, dogs to walk and trying to catch some sleep when we can. (Did we mention we work overnights?)

To be sure, we’ve also spent the past nine months or so doing what we do probably as well as anything: Calling one another after a handful of back-and-forth texts to spout our grand plans for this very newsletter — and squeezing in a steady stream laughs, of course.

But now, we’re finally ready to jump back into the West Virginia Legislature ahead of its return to Charleston on January 10. Like last session, we’ll give you a primer on what’s coming down the pike each day for 60 Days.

If you’ve gotten this far, we’re guessing you were around last session — and we know you’re wondering — ‘Where’s that shameless pitch for coffee donations?’ Well, you asked for it:

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It’s bound to be an interesting session and I’m not sure I am ready for it. I’m pretty sure I said that last year.

But I mean it this time.

That’s not any sort of political statement on the possibilities of what could come in terms of bills, resolutions, committee meetings or floor debates — or even the budget. It’s just an acknowledgement that 2024 is a big election year and all bets are off.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe that state lawmakers tend to dial things back a bit in even-numbered years — hoping to not rock the boat and jeopardize a bid for re-election with November on the horizon. Every bill introduced, every floor speech, every vote is given a new context in an election year — with this round of lawmaking the one that’ll be the most fresh in the minds of registered voters.

All 100 seats in the House of Delegates will be up for grabs, as will 17 of the 34 seats in the state Senate.

And Gov. Jim Justice is vying for the U.S. Senate seat Joe Manchin has announced he won’t seek again. Justice faces Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary, which means the two of them will be duking it out until May 14th. (According to Ballotpedia, there’s two other lesser-known Republicans in that race as of now. But keep in mind: the official filing period for the 2024 election cycle doesn’t begin until January 8th and runs through January 27th.)

Justice, who has long coveted and received an endorsement from former president Donald Trump, remains popular. But Mooney has some high-dollar backing from Super PACs, such as Club for Growth, which is sure to have some effect on the race.

One way or another, it’s shaping up to be an interesting race and Justice will likely be hoping to usher in some legislative wins to raise his stock with GOP voters (and no-party affiliated voters who choose to pick up a Republican primary ballot).

Given term limits, this is Justice’s final lap as governor, which means his State of the State Address on Night One of the session will be his last opportunity to showcase his vision for West Virginia. Get ready for whiteboards, props, maybe even an appearance from his canine sidekick — and be sure to join us for a live chat here on Substack that night.

Whether the GOP-dominated Senate and House go along with Justice’s ideas remains to be seen. Over the past seven years, they’ve clashed at times. But they’ve also gotten some marquee conservative priorities across the finish line, such as lowering the personal income tax, allowing firearms on college campuses and enacting a near-total ban on abortion.

So what’s in store? Honestly, I’ll just say I have some homework to do over the next few weeks.

We’ll have a better idea of what might be coming this session soon enough. Legislative leaders will speak to the news media in moderated forums and there’ll be one last round of interim committee meetings leading up to that second Wednesday of the new year.

That does it for now. We’ll likely be back in your inboxes a time or two before things kick off on January 10th. And if you would, buy us a coffee or two — or make it five! We’re bound to need all of the caffeine we can get to keep us going for the next couple of months.

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