He Tried to Set Limits on His State’s School Vouchers. Billionaires Helped Bankroll a Campaign to Unseat Him.

On a cold February morning at West Virginia’s Capitol, children in winter jackets, holding signs and their homework, clogged the hallways outside the House Finance Committee room. Delegate Vernon Criss, the committee’s chairperson, popped outside his office, then promptly walked back in. 

Five days earlier, the Republican lawmaker had proposed to limit payouts from a voucher program that diverts public tax dollars to private education. Since then, families had shown up each morning, and with them lobbyists and organizers posting inflammatory assertions that the proposal would kill the program.

Criss didn’t want that. Five years earlier, he voted to create the Hope Scholarship program, the nation’s first educational savings account program to have no income requirements. Since then, 11 other states have passed similar legislation. 

In the first year of the Hope program in West Virginia, it cost the state $9 million. Now, as 2026 was beginning, it was set to expand, with estimates that it could cost $200 million or more a year. And Criss was concerned that unchecked growth of the program, coupled with a spree of tax cuts, could put the state budget into a tailspin. The state and its lawmakers needed “to face the music,” as Criss would later say.

On that February day in Charleston, a staffer unlocked the committee door. Parents and media filed in, taking seats along the narrow benches lining the committee room’s walls. Kids lay on the floor. A delegate asked if the Hope Scholarship bill would be discussed. When Criss said no, the parents and their kids stood up and filed out. 

Within the next few days, lawmakers would stop the effort to curtail spending on vouchers. And Criss would soon be fighting for his political life.

The money and organizing behind the demise of the bill, as well as the targeting of Criss, can be traced to “school choice” advocates at the local and national levels and their ability to spend huge sums to have their way.

When Republicans assumed control of the West Virginia Legislature in 2015, school choice — their preferred terminology for voucher-style programs — became a rallying point for an array of political nonprofits. Through lobbying and supporting sympathetic lawmakers, they helped establish the Hope Scholarship six years later. 

The first year, a little more than 2,300 students enrolled in the program, which was designed to permit more students over time. Today, 26,000 students are taking part, more than the enrollment in the state’s largest public school district.

West Virginia has been part of a nationwide push, partially funded by billionaire-backed political groups, to use taxpayer dollars to fund private schools.

Among the proponents of these programs are the influential Koch family network and Pennsylvania billionaire Jeffrey Yass, who has spent more than $350 million since 2015 on political campaigns, including a push for public funding for private education.

In West Virginia, Arkansas and Texas, proponents have been eager to challenge anyone who got in the way, including fellow Republicans who voiced concerns. Basic guardrails or efforts to cap spending have been met with intense resistance.

During the 2026 West Virginia primary, three political action committees spent heavily on independent advertisements, targeting 10 incumbent Republicans. They succeeded in ousting four, all of whom had disagreements with the governor; most expressed reservations about the Hope Scholarship.

Their biggest victory was unseating Criss, the long-serving incumbent and high-ranking Republican.

One of the three PACs working to defeat Criss is affiliated with the Koch family. Yass has contributed to the two others: School Freedom Fund and the Sugar Maple PAC. David McIntosh, president of School Freedom Fund and the affiliated Club for Growth, was jubilant afterward.

“These elections are a warning to Republican leaders like Vernon Criss — if you oppose school freedom, expect to be held accountable,” he wrote in a press announcement at the time.

Criss had been unopposed in his 2024 primary. In 2026, the three PACs spent more than $145,000 to help a 23-year-old defeat him.

Criss’ proposal to put financial limits on the Hope Scholarship program came as West Virginia public schools arrived at a dangerous crossroads. The program directs dollars away from public schools, adding to funding shortfalls created by enrollment drops.

Since 2019, 70 public schools have closed throughout the state, with the system losing more than 30,000 students. By the end of this school year, up to 20 more schools could close. 

During the same legislative session this year, when lawmakers passed emergency legislation to help one school district stay open, there was little drama — no crowds in the hallways or the galleries. 

The Rise of Hope 

In 2021, as West Virginia lawmakers worked on the bill that would create the Hope Scholarship, they got some help from the outside: a lobbyist and political operative named Jason Huffman. 

Huffman has been the director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia since the mid-2010s. The group is part of the larger Americans for Prosperity, which was set up by the billionaire industrialist David Koch and supported by his brother Charles, longtime donors to conservative causes. Americans for Prosperity advocates for low taxes, school choice and loosened environmental regulations throughout the country. 

In shaping the West Virginia legislation, Huffman said, one goal was to create a school voucher program that other states could model. While other states had already passed voucher-style programs, they hadn’t made them open to all residents regardless of income.

Among those advocating in West Virginia were members of Cardinal Institute, a homegrown conservative think tank. Founded in 2015, the group made public funding for private schooling one of its first policy planks. Over the last decade, Cardinal has received significant donations from organizations that also have received funding from Koch entities and Yass. 

To support the Hope legislation, Cardinal’s leaders distributed research, published columns in newspapers and linked up with other groups, like Americans for Prosperity and the Institute for Justice, which litigates libertarian causes, to push the issue. They also found allies in parents who wanted the financial flexibility to send their children to private schools or teach them at home or in small clusters of like-minded families. 

Katie Switzer, a mother of six, became one of Cardinal’s most reliable advocates. She had started looking into schooling options after her second child was diagnosed with a learning disability. 

“I just felt like this doesn’t feel good to send my nonverbal child to a school that you know isn’t really collaborative, and I don’t know what’s going on when she’s there because she can’t tell me when she gets home,” she said. The experience made her a proponent of alternatives to public school.

Her story appeared in some of Cardinal’s promotional copy for the bill. She sat in on a video call presentation featuring state Sen. Patrcia Rucker, a Hope Scholarship proponent. She took to Facebook to tout the program. 

And she stepped up when the Hope Scholarship was challenged in court by other parents who argued the program would undermine funding for public schools. 

Hope’s opponents in the case gained support from the state Board of Education, which argued the program siphoned money away from public schools. On the other side was the West Virginia attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, defending the law and the state.

The Institute for Justice was looking to get involved, but it needed to find somebody with standing in the case. Switzer and another parent signed up, giving the firm the ability to file motions and argue in court. The Institute for Justice has received $8.5 million from charities controlled by Yass over nearly a decade. 

The case went to the West Virginia Supreme Court, where the justices ruled 4-1 in favor of the program. 

The ruling meant the Hope program had survived. It was good timing for Morrisey. He was about to make a run for governor. When Morrisey waded into a tough four-way primary battle, the Club for Growth Action, a super PAC Yass has donated heavily to over the years, was ready to help.

“Our goal in all of this is to elect people who will be champions for school freedom, lower taxes, less regulation, so businesses can thrive,” McIntosh, the group’s president, said in an interview. 

The Club for Growth Action pumped $10.8 million into that race. Morrisey won the plurality in the Republican primary and went on to trounce his Democratic opponent in the general election. 

On a cold morning in January 2025, Morrisey stood bundled up in a black wool coat on the stairs of Capitol, its gold dome towering above him. He took the oath of office and gave his address. 

“We will expand the Hope Scholarship, putting more control in the hands of parents to choose the best educational path for their children,” he said.

Runaway Train

Hours before Morrisey gave his State of the State address earlier this year, the House Education Committee called a meeting to hear about a report from the Rand Corporation, a nonpartisan think tank. 

Rand called on the state to fix what was becoming abundantly clear: Education in West Virginia wasn’t just in transition; it was in crisis. 

Initially the Hope Scholarship was limited to students attending public school or children who would enter kindergarten. Participation grew over time. And as the 2026-27 school year began, the program opened to any student in West Virginia, including those who had spent their entire academic careers in private school or in homeschooling.

That translated into tens of millions of additional state dollars to private schools and homeschooling. Estimates for the 2026-27 school year ranged from $230 million to more than $300 million in the months leading up to the legislative session. The program costs for the year are still being tallied but are currently projected at an unprecedented $150 million. 

The Rand report suggested placing an income cap on the Hope Scholarship and increasing funding for public schools. 

While the Education Committee would work on public school funding, Criss’ Finance Committee would tackle the ballooning costs of the Hope Scholarship. He was not interested in Rand’s solutions but found his own. By capping the scholarship amount and limiting certain expenses, Criss was hoping he could help prolong the program for families well into the future. But families would soon be rallying against him.

In the time since the Hope Scholarship had withstood the court challenge, Switzer’s reach had only grown. On Facebook, she administered a group that offers practical advice to hundreds of parents, or “Hope Schoolers” as she called them, on questions like what items counted as qualifying expenses and how to properly file for the program. 

Before Criss’ plan rolled out, Switzer said she received word from a member of the Finance Committee — though she did not disclose who — that the Hope Scholarship would be discussed.

Writing a lengthy Facebook post, she warned that the move would severely damage the program. “The bill takes away 19,000 children’s access to online education, tutoring, private schools across state borders, and many other beneficial academic programs,” she wrote. 

Huffman, the Americans for Prosperity state director, took to radio and social media to decry what he described as an existential threat to the program. Parents with kids in tow echoed those fears.

Criss’ proposal would’ve capped the award amount for the Hope Scholarship at a little more than $5,000 a year. He said his intent was to prolong the program for the long run, not kill it.

Huffman countered that by capping the award amount, inflation would eventually erode families’ abilities to use the program for private education or homeschooling. 

Looking back, Criss said he anticipated some pushback, because the Hope Scholarship is a “giveaway program.” He blamed political forces for riling people up. 

At a caucus meeting with the Republican supermajority — which holds 91 of the 100 seats in the lower chamber — Criss said he couldn’t muster the votes. A bill to fix public schools that came out of the Education Committee died entirely.

Election season was right around the corner, and Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia and other groups hadn’t forgotten the Hope Scholarship battle. Criss had failed what Huffman called “a litmus test” in trying to restrict public money for parents looking for an alternative to public school.

Meanwhile, McIntosh, the president for Club for Growth, said he received word from his allies in the Morrisey administration. Morrisey was concerned about lawmakers who had opposed him on budget issues and school choice. The governor was looking to replace those he saw as not aligned.

While the legislative backlash had been about one issue, the campaign against Morrisey’s foes went well beyond education issues. 

Ads depicted Criss as a liberal who wanted to open borders for illegal immigration. That was based on a no vote Criss had cast against a piece of legislation that would’ve mandated employers run a citizenship check on every employee. 

Fliers mailed by the School Freedom Fund, a PAC affiliated with Club for Growth, depicted candidates as supporters of drag queens. Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia sent volunteers door to door to rally for their candidates, including in Criss’ district. 

The newly created Sugar Maple PAC — headed by a former state delegate and Morrisey ally — ran ads accusing opponents of being Republicans in Name Only. 

One mailer, depicting Criss driving a garbage truck, accused him of taking “West Virginia’s values to the dump.” On the back, it reiterated his vote against the citizenship check for employees and his vote against West Virginia’s abortion ban. 

“Vernon Criss’ liberal trash,” the flier read, with an image of black trash bags.

“I think that the fact that they called me a liberal, it just stuck out,” Criss said. “You know, as the chairman of finance, I know that it’s a targeted job, obviously, that’s part of the deal. Those types of things happen, that’s just part of the politics involved here.” 

The School Freedom Fund poured nearly $1 million into statehouse races across West Virginia to both retain Morrissey’s supporters and oust detractors, like Criss. Americans for Prosperity did the same, again targeting Criss, and spending around $700,000 across the state. 

A spokesperson for Morrisey said in an email that the governor is a supporter of both public schools and the Hope Scholarship and “is also grateful that organizations that share his worldview of helping West Virginia children having the best educational opportunities in the country weigh in.”

Sugar Maple PAC and Yass did not respond to requests for comment. Yass contributed $450,000 to Sugar Maple in the lead-up to the 2026 primary. Among the three PACs, Sugar Maple spent the most on the Criss race: $86,000 to attack Criss and $15,000 to back his opponent, Charles Hartzog, a 23-year-old gas station cashier. 

Criss didn’t just lose the primary; Hartzog beat him with 61% of the vote. Criss is now running a long-shot campaign as a write-in for his district in the general election.

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