It has been a while since U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito has been able to return to Wheeling for the Fantasy In Lights Parade. On Friday night, she was back at the parade — and in one of the best seats in the house.
Capito, R-W.Va., was the parade’s grand marshal, waving at parade goers along the route that took participants around Center Wheeling. The Glen Dale native loved being back in the Ohio Valley and participating in a holiday staple.
“It’s so nice having that feeling of coming home,” Capito said, “coming across the border, coming from (Washington) D.C. in the snow. It always makes me feel good to come home. I feel like this is coming home for me, so it’s a joyous time.”
Capito had talked with festival organizers for a while about serving as this year’s grand marshal, but she wasn’t certain that she could make it back to Friendly City to take part.
“Washington is moving fast,” she said.
Action has kicked into hyperdrive in the nation’s capital since Election Day, when Donald Trump was elected president for the second time and Republicans took the majorities in both the U.S. House of Representative and the Senate.
She didn’t want to make promises she couldn’t keep, but in the end, she was able to fulfill the promise of riding in Friday’s parade.
Capito was all over West Virginia on Friday. She was in Fairmont to celebrate the opening of the new Prime 6 manufacturing facility with Gov. Jim Justice, who will join her in the U.S. Senate in January. She visited the Mitchell Plant in Marshall County as well.
And helping the Ohio Valley celebrate the holidays was the perfect way to end the day, she said.
“It’s part of being a family,” she said. “It’s part of being a community. It’s part of being a normal, everyday West Virginian who has the same aspirations and the same feelings toward the holidays.”