West Virginia State Senate elections, 2012

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	West Virginia State Senate elections, 2012
	Majority control • Campaign contributions
	Qualifications • Term limits • Impact of Redistricting
	State Legislative Election Results
	List of candidates District 1 • District 2 • District 3 • District 4 • District 5 • District 6 • District 7 • District 8 • District 9 • District 10 • District 11 • District 12 • District 13 • District 14 • District 15 • District 16 • District 17
	West Virginia State Senate • 2012 West Virginia House Elections

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Elections for the office of West Virginia State Senate were held in West Virginia on November 6, 2012. A total of 17 seats were up for election.

The signature filing deadline for candidates wishing to run in these elections was January 28, 2011. The primary election day was May 8, 2012.

See also: West Virginia House of Delegates elections, 2012 and State legislative elections, 2012

Incumbents retiring

Name	Party	Current office
Dan Foster	Democratic	Senate District 17
John Fanning	Democratic	Senate District 6
Karen Facemyer	Republican	Senate District 4

Majority control

See also: Partisan composition of state senates

Heading into the November 6 election, the Democratic Party held the majority in the West Virginia State Senate:

West Virginia State Senate
Party		As of November 5, 2012	After the 2012 Election
	Democratic Party	28	24
	Republican Party	6	10
Total		34	34

Campaign contributions

See also: State-by-state comparison of donations to state senate campaigns

This chart shows how many candidates ran for West Virginia State Senate in the past four elections and the cumulative amount of campaign contributions in state senate races, including contributions in both primary and general election contests. All figures come from Follow The Money.^[1]

Year	Number of candidates	Total contributions
2010	51	$2,663,291
2008	41	$2,445,385
2006	45	$3,412,237
2004	44	$2,543,094
2002	49	$3,209,760

In 2010, the candidates for state senate raised a total of $2,663,291 in campaign contributions. The top 10 donors were: ^[2]

Donor	Amount
Chafin, H Truman	$303,000
Smith, Greg (Hootie)	$227,570
Barnes, John	$88,451
Greathouse, Dan	$50,834
Contractors Association of West Virginia	$26,300
Tucker, Gregory A	$25,200
West Virginia Bankers Association	$25,000
West Virginia Chamber of Commerce	$21,500
West Virginia Building & Construction Trades Council	$18,000
Frich, Cindy	$17,854

Impact of redistricting

See also: Redistricting in West Virginia

A new Senate map was passed by the Senate on August 3, 2011, concurred with by the House on August 5, and signed by Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) on August 18. Though the House of Delegates faced a trickier situation in that its first map was vetoed by Tomblin over errors, and had debate centered around the elimination of multi-member districts, the Senate map was largely held over from the previous one. However, a lawsuit was brought, charging that there was a lack of equality of apportionment, compactness of districts, and minimization of division of counties.^[3]

Qualifications

Section 13 of Article 6 of the West Virginia Constitution states, "No person holding any other lucrative office or employment under this state, the United States, or any foreign government; no member of Congress; and no person who is sheriff, constable, or clerk of any court of record, shall be eligible to a seat in the Legislature."