Before he was in Congress, Riley Moore was West Virginia's state treasurer. The treasurer's job is unglamorous: manage the state's cash, run its banking relationships, and get West Virginia the best terms it can when it borrows money.

Moore used it to run a political campaign against banks.

In July 2022 he published a "Restricted Financial Institution List" barring five of the largest financial firms in the country from new state banking business: BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. Their offense, as Reuters reported at the time, was being deemed to "boycott" fossil fuel companies — which in practice meant weighing climate risk when deciding where to put money.

Then he did it again. In February 2024, Moore sent notices to six more banks — BMO, Citibank, Fifth Third, Northern Trust, TD Bank, and HSBC — warning they were headed for the same list.

What he said he was doing

Moore's framing was that he was protecting West Virginia's industries from coordinated financial pressure. Here is how he put it in 2024:

"While we have been effective in our fight against ESG activism, we must remain vigilant to ensure we do not entrust state funds to banks that are engaged in coordinated political efforts to destroy our state's critical industries."

He wanted the banks, in his words, "to return to fairer, more objective treatment of our coal, oil and natural gas industries."

That's a coherent political position. The question is who pays for it.

What it costs

When a state tells the biggest underwriters in the country they can't bid on its business, fewer firms compete to handle its bonds. Fewer bidders means worse pricing. Worse pricing on borrowing means higher interest — and interest on state debt is paid by taxpayers, out of the same budget that funds schools, roads, and water systems.

This is not a theoretical objection. It has been measured.

The consulting firm Econsult Solutions studied Texas, which passed a similar law, and found it cost that state between $303 million and $532 million in additional borrowing costs in a single year. Applying the same method to West Virginia, Econsult estimated that the state's anti-ESG law increased total interest costs on bonds issued in 2022 by $9 million to $29 million.

Nine to twenty-nine million dollars. In one year. In one of the smallest and poorest states in the country.

For comparison: in June 2026, Moore stood in front of the House Appropriations Committee holding a jar of brown tap water from a McDowell County home and asked for $50 million to fix southern West Virginia's drinking water. The committee said no.

The high end of what his bank blacklist may have cost West Virginia in a single year of bond interest is more than half of the water money he couldn't get.

Who this was actually for

Moore's line is that the banks were attacking West Virginia's industries. Look at whose money moved when he ran for Congress.

Three outside groups spent more than $1 million electing him — led by the cryptocurrency industry's super PAC at $726,377 and the Koch network's at $265,673, against the $924,000 he raised from PACs directly. His direct donors include Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, and the steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs. Only 9% of his money came from small grassroots donors; he ranks #344 out of 440 House members in grassroots funding.

Whatever the five banks on that list were doing to West Virginia's coal industry, blacklisting them did not put a miner back to work or keep a plant open. What it did do was give a state treasurer a national fight to be seen having — and, as it turned out, a profile that converted into more than $1 million of outside money when he ran for Congress two years later.

Moore carried the same approach into Congress, where he now has a 0% score from the League of Conservation Voters for 2025. A perfect zero in his first year.

The trade he made

West Virginia is a state that needs cheap money. It has old water systems, old bridges, and a tax base that can't absorb a bad borrowing year the way Texas can.

Its treasurer decided the state should pay more to borrow, in order to make a point about how five banks in New York think about climate risk.

He got the point made, and the profile that came with it. The bill for the point is in the interest line of West Virginia's bond payments, where nobody has to look at it.

Sources

Lamar Johnson, "West Virginia warns 6 banks they're headed for restricted list over fossil fuel stances", ESG Dive, March 1, 2024; and "West Virginia bars five financial firms deemed fossil fuel boycotters", Reuters, July 28, 2022. Photo: Getty Images, via ESG Dive.