Published: October 30, 2026
CAPITOL HILL, Monrovia — House Speaker Richard Nagbe Koon is weighing a 2029 run for the Sinoe County District 1 seat held by Rep. Thomas Romeo Quioh, one of the lawmakers whose change of allegiance helped carry Koon to the speakership, and Quioh feels betrayed, sources at the Capitol told The Liberian Investigator.
The move would take Koon out of Montserrado County District 11, a district where he finished third on his first attempt and won his first term with roughly one vote in five, and could pit the sitting Speaker against a sitting member of the House he leads.
Sources close to Quioh said the Sinoe lawmaker has been told Koon intends to seek the District 1 seat rather than another term in Montserrado, and that he sees it as betrayal by a man he stood with when the speakership was in play.
Quioh began the House leadership crisis aligned with then-Speaker J. Fonati Koffa before joining the majority bloc that consolidated around Koon. That realignment contributed to the change in House leadership that ended with Koon in the Speaker’s chair. Sources close to Quioh said he did not expect the alliance to turn into an electoral threat in his own district.
Speculation has grown with Koon’s frequent presence in the southeast. One source said the Speaker has made several recent visits to Sinoe and is expected to dedicate a radio station under construction in District 1. The station, the source said, could give Koon a platform to build his visibility in the district ahead of the 2029 elections.
A Capitol staff member familiar with the political discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity, questioned why Koon would leave his district if he were confident in his record there.
“It looks like the Speaker is running away from Dr. Thomas Nimene Tweh Jr., ‘Original Countryman’ (OCM). Why he can’t rerun in the district if he still believes he has done well for the people there,” the staff member said.
Tweh is the challenger Koon never faced at the ballot box. During the 2023 election cycle, the Supreme Court ruled Tweh ineligible to run because of his American citizenship and lack of legal domicile in the district, after a complaint filed by fellow District 11 candidate Siah Tandapolie. The National Elections Commission had initially cleared Tweh after a hearing officer ruled in his favor, but the Supreme Court overturned that decision, citing evidence from the NEC’s Geo-Information Service that he did not live in the district.
The rivalry has since gone public. In a social media post last year, Tweh vowed to challenge Koon in the next elections even if District 11 were split to create a new district. Koon answered on Facebook: “I can close my eyes and beat anyone in District #11.” Tweh shot back that the margin between them would be as wide as the distance between Montserrado and Sinoe.
Koon’s electoral record in the district gives the jab some bite. He first ran for the seat in 2011 as an independent and finished third with 2,443 votes, or 10.42 percent, behind the CDC’s Moses Saah Tandanpolie Sr. and the Unity Party’s J. Gabriel Nyenka. He won in 2017 on the Unity Party ticket with 6,674 votes, or 20.54 percent, in a 23-candidate field, ahead of Nyenka, then running for the Coalition for Democratic Change, with 5,416, a margin of 1,258 votes. Nearly four in five District 11 voters chose someone else.
Quioh has not publicly broken with Koon. But sources close to him said the reported plan has strained a relationship built during one of the House’s most consequential political battles, and that political actors in the county are closely watching Koon’s activities in Sinoe, including the radio station.
If Koon enters the Sinoe race, the contest would test whether loyalties forged in the Koffa speakership crisis can survive an election, and settle whether the Speaker’s political future still lies with the Montserrado district that has twice elected him or has moved to Sinoe.
Discussion about this post