Cook facing primary challenge

The incumbent House member will battle Waynesburg Councilman Ben Humble on Tuesday.

State Rep. Bud Cook, R-West Pike Township, is facing one Republican primary challenger in the 50th District, while one candidate is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

In the May 19 race, Cook will square off with Waynesburg Councilman Ben Humble. The sole candidate on the Democratic side is Lois Bower-Bjornson of Scenery Hill.

The 50th Legislative District consists of all of Greene County and the following communities in Washington County: the townships of East Bethlehem, North Bethlehem, West Bethlehem and West Pike Run, and the boroughs of Allenport, Beallsville, Bentleyville, California, Centerville, Charleroi, Coal Center, Cokeburg, Deemston, Dunlevy, Elco, Ellsworth, Long Branch, Marianna, North Charleroi, Roscoe, Speers, Stockdale, Twilight and West Brownsville.

State representatives in the General Assembly serve two-year terms and the base salary is $113,591.

Republican candidates

Bud Cook

Cook first won a state House seat in the 49th District in 2016. After redistricting, he has been successful in all his reelection attempts in the 50th District. Cook has a degree from West Virginia Wesleyan College and graduated from California Area High School.

Cook said one of his biggest accomplishments has been educating the rest of the state and even the country about his district and promoting its communities.

“It absolutely amazed me how many people did not know where Greene County was and Washington County,” Cook said. “So we were really on a mission to kind of educate the rest of the state and the world exactly where we’re at, what we’re about and the opportunities here. And I think over the last couple of years, we’ve really been kind of successful in doing that.”

Cook highlighted some of his initiatives, including those involving young people in his district.

“Once a year, from every one of our 10 school districts, we have two to three representative students that serve as the advisor to the representative,” Cook said. “And their task is to identify assets, attractions and activities that would attract families into the district to come here and live. And let me tell you, that group knocks it out of the ballpark every year. So we’re very excited about that.”

Cook also mentioned his efforts with the annual “Blessing of the Balers,” his introduction of legislation for how Local Share Account funds should be handled and funds he’s brought into the district for volunteer fire departments and other regional projects.

According to Cook, he’s brought more than $70 million to the 50th District since 2023.

Humble, the current council president in Waynesburg, said his priorities involve things he has heard directly from residents both as a council member and as part of the Waynesburg Fire Department.

Ben Humble

Humble wants to work on helping those dealing with high property taxes, provide assistance with the increasing cost of living, create infrastructure to keep and attract young residents to the district and to frequently talk with municipalities to learn about the issues they’re facing.

Humble noted that during his time as council president, he hasn’t had to increase taxes for his constituents in Waynesburg. He said people frequently ask him how he’s managed to keep taxes low.

“People ask me, ‘Hey, how are you doing this?’” Humble said. “It’s because I started running it like a business, and I want to bring that to the Harrisburg standpoint of running things level headed, working with other Republicans, and maybe working across the aisle to bring better infrastructure and jobs and help our taxes get lowered and not put the burden on our constituents anymore.

“My entire race has been done from a community public servant standpoint. I’m not a politician, and I don’t think I ever will be. I’m doing it as a statesman.”

Humble emphasized that he wants to be transparent and available for his constituents if elected.

“I just feel that I’ve been told by so many different other elected officials that they’re having a hard time with communication, or feeling like they’re a part of the conversation, and so that’s something that I plan to fix,” he said. “I want to be accessible to people and this whole campaign has been faith driven, so I think that’s really something we have to enforce.”

Humble also wants to work on attracting businesses to the region, especially for communities like Charleroi that recently saw a lot of jobs leave. He stressed that the important thing for the seat would be to listen to constituents about what they need.

Democratic candidate

Bower-Bjornson, a Fredericktown native, graduated from West Virginia University and is currently the Southwestern Pennsylvania field organizer for the Clean Air Council. Bower-Bjornson wants to focus on four issues: affordable housing, transportation, energy and education.

For Bower-Bjornson, public transportation and affordable housing go hand in hand, as improving one of those improves the other. She said reliable public transportation in the 50th District could allow workers to travel to other parts of the Pittsburgh region for work, which could make communities in the district more attractive for those might not want to live close to the city.

She would aim to work with the Mid-Mon Valley Transit Authority and Freedom Transit in Washington County to eventually have them connect between certain working centers and bridge transportation gaps.

“If I want to take a bus, I have to drive 10 minutes to take a bus, and then if I want to take a subway, I have to drive 35 minutes to get on the subway into the South Hills, and then another 40 minutes to the city. So at that point you should just drive,” she said. “What I’d love to do is connect the two busways together to fill up some of those gaps initially, and I know that involves talking to the bus companies and so forth.

“But it’s also a job creator, and I think by allowing further transportation routes, then people would be incentivized to move to the area, because they would have ways to get to work.”

Bower-Bjornson noted that there could be ways to create incentives for families to move to the region, similar to initiatives done by nations abroad. She said bringing more residents to the region could help over time.

When it comes to energy industries, Bower-Bjornson wants to focus on helping the region diversify, especially as industry starts moving toward renewable energy. She emphasized that she’s not anti-industry and that she wants to keep the current jobs available in the energy market, but also prepare for jobs in renewable energy as industries move in that direction.

“I feel that we have been taken from and taken from for over 100 years,” she said. “I remember when coal went away and steel went away and we were left with nothing really. You can’t flip the switch and make fossil fuel industries go away. However, they are dwindling. And if you look at the market, and you look at all the larger oil and gas companies, they’re already investing in renewables because they know that’s where the market is going.

“But what’s unfortunate in our area is they just want to keep sucking us dry and not giving us a choice. So here we are. We’re the second-largest- producing energy state in the country, and we don’t have a choice. Texas has wind and solar initiatives. You get to pick what you want on your property, and we don’t because oil and gas wants all of it until we don’t have anything left.”