Glenn’s Story
Glenn Elliott is a 7th generation West Virginian and former Mayor of his beloved hometown of Wheeling. Under his leadership, the City of Wheeling has ushered in an unprecedented era of public and private investments in downtown revitalization, new housing construction, parks and recreation enhancements, strategic infrastructure initiatives, and long-overdue new headquarters for its police and fire departments. As a result of his efforts, Wheeling has gained recognition as one of the fastest-growing economies in West Virginia, and the West Virginia Municipal League recognized him as the “Mayor of the Year” in 2022 and as the recipient of the “James Hunt Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2023.
A Wheeling native with middle-class roots, Glenn is a 1990 graduate of The Linsly School and a 1994 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business with a dual concentration in finance and political science. In 2001, he received a J.D. degree cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. He has also received honorary Doctorate degrees from Wheeling University and West Liberty University in recognition of his commitment to lifelong learning and community engagement. Academic accomplishments aside, Glenn is most proud of the fact that he financed and repaid 100% of his collegiate and graduate educations himself.
Glenn first developed a love of public service as an attendee of the 1989 class of Mountaineer Boys State in Jackson’s Mill. After college, he had the opportunity of a lifetime to serve as a Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd from 1994 to 1999. This experience gave him a front-row seat to the inner workings of the U.S. Senate while learning from a West Virginia legend and the longest serving Senator in U.S. history. It also impressed upon him just how important it is to be vigilant against all attempts to undermine our national adherence to the U.S. Constitution.
Though Glenn began his legal practice in Washington, by 2009, the country roads of West Virginia had called him home. He returned to his hometown of Wheeling, where he established a solo law practice and in 2013 acquired the Professional Building, an iconic downtown office building that had been constructed in 1892 and was in dire need of restoration. His dedication to preservation efforts earned him recognition from the Wheeling City Council in 2014. A decade later, this once-vacant structure now houses two Ohio County law firms. It is also where Glenn resides with his wife Cassandra, their two-year-old son Harrison, their dog Minkah, and two mischievous cats.
While fatherhood has quickly become Glenn’s favorite pursuit, his interests include a variety of subjects and activities. For the last decade, he has spent thousands of hours on evenings and weekends working on DIY projects in The Professional Building—most of which involve undoing decades of “renovations” to its interior spaces and restoring them to their Victorian Era splendor. Though far from a professional musician, he plays piano and guitar and has written and recorded dozens of songs. He is also a licensed drone pilot who is always looking for ways to capture the beauty of West Virginia from the air. And he has been researching his family tree for more than two decades, tracking all but a few ancestral lines back six or more generations, and identifying relationships with several U.S. presidents and William Shakespeare along the way.
But it is his newfound fatherhood—coupled with his experiences on the front lines of Wheeling’s revitalization and the lessons learned from his middle-class upbringing—that has convinced him of the need to turn his focus towards representing West Virginia in the United State Senate.
