Republicans’ best chance of unseating Sen. Joe Manchin is to hope he retires before.
The long-serving West Virginia Democrat may be the party’s most vulnerable member heading into 2024. Republicans, on the other hand, perceive his opponent as treacherous. Manchin is a West Virginia institution who has defied the odds time and again in this conservative state.
A Republican organisation affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell launched a $2 million ad campaign targeting Manchin a year and a half before the election. National Republican leaders, who don’t want to leave any room for error in their efforts to retake the Senate, have enlisted the support of popular Gov. Jim Justice to run for Manchin’s seat. And Justice, who has a political network with Manchin, has stated that he is unlikely to run for reelection now that he is in the contest. National Republicans hope so — or privately hope that his flirtations with a centrist presidential run grow into a full-fledged campaign.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) stated she doesn’t know if her colleague West Virginia senator will run for reelection and hasn’t asked him. But a run for president? “He might do it — he’s talking about it,” she speculated.
There is no way to sugarcoat Manchin’s awful situation. After decades of Democratic dominance in West Virginia, the state has gone MAGA in recent years. Former President Donald Trump won it by over 40 percentage points in 2020, and there are only 14 Democrats remaining in the state legislature’s 134-member body. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, Manchin’s approval rating has dropped, with 55 percent of people opposing him.
However, interviews with 18 elected officials, strategists, and political watchers in West Virginia and Washington, D.C. show that Manchin is far from dead. Even Justice’s former pollster advised against dismissing Manchin.
“There’s a reason Joe Manchin is basically the last standing Democrat in a state that has had a red tsunami since 2014,” said Mark Blankenship, a West Virginia-based Republican pollster who worked for Justice’s 2020 gubernatorial campaign. “You can’t say that it’s impossible for him to win because he’s already won so much.”
“You can’t take Joe for granted,” Manchin’s Republican colleagues said. “He’s a formidable politician,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who spoke at Justice’s campaign kickoff last month.
The early investment by McConnell’s allies at One Nation might save Republicans money next year if it pushes Manchin out. Otherwise, the GOP will have to spend millions of dollars persuading West Virginia voters to abandon a man who hasn’t lost an election since the 1990s. Without Manchin on the ballot, many operators believe the state will automatically switch, and Republicans will be able to redirect their resources to other critical battleground states.
“It would be nice if we didn’t have to,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-SD) remarked when asked if his party would have to spend money if Manchin retired. “We’ll have to wait and see how it all plays out.”
Manchin was 35 years old when he first entered the West Virginia state senate in 1982. He served in both chambers until leaving to run an unsuccessful governor’s primary bid in 1996. It was his only defeat in a race. He ultimately chose to support the Republican nominee over the lady who defeated him for the Democratic nomination.
He became West Virginia’s Secretary of State four years later and was elected governor in 2004. In 2010, he ran for the Senate in a special election left up by the death of Democrat Robert Byrd.
Democrats’ greatest chance of retaining Manchin’s seat in 2024 is for him to run for reelection, followed by a brutally nasty Republican primary that leaves the final nominee damaged and broke.
While Justice is affluent and well-liked, he does not have a monopoly on the Republican nomination. Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WVa.) is also running, a conservative hardliner who defeated a fellow member in a Republican primary for a House seat in 2022. He intends to run to Justice’s right, aided by $10 million from the anti-tax Club for Growth super PAC.
Democrats and Republicans alike claimed Manchin’s ability to retain elected office in the past was due in part to his talents as a retail politician, a significant advantage in a state of only 1.7 million people.
“He is the best face-to-face politician I’ve interacted with outside of Bill Clinton,” Patrick Hickey, a political scientist who previously worked at West Virginia University, remarked. “He has that Clinton-esque ability to make everyone feel like he’s your friend, that he’s listening to you, that he cares about you.”
Hickey said in 2012 that he invited Manchin’s Republican opponent, John Raese, to class. “Within a week,” he claimed, Manchin would be in his class to greet pupils.
For years, Manchin, a moderate, has benefited from his distance from national Democratic leaders. During his first Senate race, he used an ad to criticise Democrats’ cap-and-trade legislation. In 2018, his vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was credited with helping him win the Senate campaign that year. However, Manchin’s approval rating plummeted last year after he voted for — and helped design — President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Regardless of Manchin’s history, many of West Virginia’s few remaining Democrats are pessimistic about his chances of reelection.
“I don’t think he can pull it out,” Deirdre Purdy, chair of the Calhoun County Democratic Party, said. “My county has so few Democrats that I can’t even form a full committee.”
Manchin has threatened to vote with Republicans to dismantle Biden’s landmark climate legislation, claiming that Biden has extended electric vehicle tax benefits beyond the law’s requirements.
Given the state’s deep-MAGA lean, some Republicans believe that whether Justice or Mooney wins the nomination, either will defeat Manchin. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared, “This state is now solidly Republican.”
Manchin has given few hints about whether he would seek for reelection, except that he will make a decision before the end of the year. In the midst of this information vacuum, political insiders have feverishly attempted to interpret the tea leaves.
When a political insider who has advised both Manchin and Justice attended Justice’s campaign launch, Republicans speculated that Manchin would not run. Larry Puccio, Manchin’s former chief of staff and close friend, was expected to attend the ceremony only if the senator had signalled his intention to withdraw. According to a GOP strategist close to Justice, Puccio will not serve on Justice’s Senate team, but the governor will “talk to him about the race and campaign.”
However, other Democrats warned against reading too much into it. Puccio, according to a source close to Manchin, “will support Manchin for any office he seeks.”
Puccio did not respond to an interview request.
Former Manchin senior aide Jonathan Kott believes Manchin is actually indecisive about another Senate race. In the 2018 race, Manchin didn’t tell his colleagues he was running for reelection until January, just days before the filing deadline.
“This is just who he is,” he explained. “He just doesn’t pay attention to the campaign until he has to.” He is a West Virginia senator who is also a legislator. He’ll sit down with his family sometime in December, I’m guessing, and they’ll make a decision. That’s exactly what he did the last time.”
