West Virginia State Senator Robert Karnes was voted out of the Senate Republican Caucus on Monday. The news went public in an exclusive interview on The Tom Roten Show, where the Senator explained to why he was voted out.
Karnes claimed he was voted out of the caucus because of a social media post where supposedly private information was shared. The post was shared by Tom Roten to his social media pages, which has since been taken down. Both Roten and Karnes claimed in the exclusive interview that Karnes was not the source of the information.
In the interview, Senator Karnes put most of the blame on his battles with Senate President Craig Blair and the rest of the Senate leadership, which harkens back to when he was removed from the Senate Chambers late in the 2023 legislative session by Blair. Karnes was calling out the Senate President on the Senate floor continuously suspending the rules.
Senator Eric Tarr, the Senate Finance Chair, recently wrote an op-ed at Lootpress comparing to Karnes to Democrat politicians like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Manchin– calling him an “anti-business candidate.” Karnes, ironically a business owner himself, wrote an op-ed in response to Tarr’s attacks. “Eric Tarr hums a conservative tune because he doesn’t know the words,” Karnes wrote in the op-ed. “If he truly wants to advance a conservative, pro-family, pro-job agenda he needs to stop attacking conservatives, stop funding liberal political candidates, and learn the words so he can join the conservative chorus.”
At the end of the interview with Karnes, Tom Roten gave an open invitation to Senators Eric Tarr and Craig Blair to come on his show and explain their side of the story.