The Inter-Mountain photo by Brad Johnson Kris Warner, the Republican nominee for West Virginia Secretary of State, was the keynote speaker at the annual Lincoln Day Dinner in Elkins Saturday evening.

ELKINS — Kris Warner, the Republican nominee for West Virginia Secretary of State, urged voters to show up on Election Day during his keynote speech at the Randolph County Republican Executive Committee’s Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday evening.

“I want to thank you all for showing up. There is power in showing up. You might notice that is the underlying theme of my comments tonight,” Warner said during the event at the Elks Country Club.

In 2000, West Virginia “had 75 Democrats in the House of Delegates, and 25 Republicans,” Warner said. “We now have 89 Republicans and 11 Democrats. We have flipped the scene.

“In the state Senate, we had 28 Democrats then, and six Republicans. We have now flipped that to a Super Majority of 31 Republicans and three Democrats,” he said.

“We learned that you had to contest all 117 seats. There are 100 House of Delegates seats and 17 state Senate seats on the ballot every two years,” Warner said.

“We found that when we didn’t fill the entire ballot, the Democrats would … come across their border and pick on a Republican that had a really good chance of winning and would spend money and time, and we would get defeated election after election.

“So we decided that we were going to challenge all 117 seats every election,” he said. “We learned that donors who were previously telling us they went to the polls last time and there were no Republicans to vote for” began contributing regularly.

Warner said Republicans now need to “show up” on Election Day, Nov. 5, to earn victories nationally, statewide and locally.

Warner also honored the memory of a recently passed Randolph County Republican leader.

“Twenty-four years ago, I was invited to keynote this dinner by none other than Ed Tyre, baby brother to (current Randolph County Republican Executive Committee chair) Caroline Jackson,” Warner said. “I want to ask you all to take a moment and remember Ed and his work for this party.”

Warner’s brother Mac is the current West Virginia Secretary of State, whose term will end in December.

His brother “has been a leader in ensuring honest and fair and safe elections,” recently testifying before Congress on election security and voter confidence, Kris Warner said.

“As your secretary of state, I want you to be assured, I will fight any and all attempts to federalize our state elections. And we will never, ever allow voting machines in West Virginia to be tied to the internet, and we’re never going to allow drop boxes as a way to deliver unsecured ballots to the polling place,” he vowed.

Warner is the executive director of the state Economic Development Authority under Gov. Jim Justice. He served four years as former President Donald Trump’s appointee as state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development office in West Virginia, from 2017 to 2021. He is a former chairman of the West Virginia Republican Party in the mid-2000s.

Warner manages and maintains his ancestral family farm in Barbour County, a land tract that goes back five generations.