Ex-con candidate compounds GOP woes in West Virginia
Former mine CEO frays party nerves
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Republican Don Blankenship doesn’t care if his party and his president don’t think he can beat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin this fall.
This former coal mining executive, an ex-convict released from prison less than a year ago, is willing to risk his personal fortune and the GOP’s golden opportunity in West Virginia for the chance to prove them all wrong.
“I’ll get elected on my own merits,” Mr. Blankenship said.
There aren’t a lot of things that can sink Republicans’ hopes in the ruby red state that Donald Trump won by 42 percentage points in 2016, but Mr. Blankenship could well be one.
His candidacy is sending shudders down the spines of Republicans who are furiously working to ensure he is not their choice to take on Mr. Manchin in November. While Mr. Blankenship’s bid is a long shot, he’s testing whether a party led by an anti-establishment outsider can rein in its anti-establishment impulses.
“The establishment, no matter who you define it as, has not been creating jobs in West Virginia,” Mr. Blankenship said at a primary debate this past week.
Even before Mr. Blankenship emerged as a legitimate Republican candidate, West Virginia was a worry for some Republicans.
Former Gov. Manchin has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of the past three decades, and he’s worked hard to cozy up to Mr. Trump and nurture a bipartisan brand.
He has voted with the Republican president more than he has opposed him, his office says, noting that the senator and Mr. Trump have collaborated on trade, environmental rules, gun violence and court nominations.
The alignment with Mr. Trump was so effective that former White House adviser Steve Bannon worried privately to colleagues that Mr. Trump might actually endorse the Democrat. An outright endorsement now is unlikely, but a Blankenship primary victory on May 8 could push Mr. Trump to help Mr. Manchin, at least indirectly, by ignoring West Virginia this fall.
The state has long been considered a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans, who hold a two-seat Senate majority that suddenly feels less secure given signs of Democratic momentum in Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee and elsewhere. If Democrats can win West Virginia, which gave Mr. Trump his largest margin of victory in the nation, they may have a slim chance at seizing the Senate majority.
Some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent conservative supporters, particularly those in Mr. Bannon’s network, have rallied behind state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a former Capitol Hill aide who was raised in New Jersey but has served as West Virginia’s top lawyer since 2013.
Rep. Evan Jenkins, a former Democrat, has highlighted his West Virginia roots and deep allegiance to Mr. Trump. Mr. Jenkins noted that Mr. Manchin missed a big chance to align himself with Mr. Trump on key issues such as taxes and health care.
“The president gave Joe Manchin every opportunity in the early weeks and months of his administration to vote the right way,” Mr. Jenkins said in an interview. “He voted wrong.”
But in interviews this past week, Mr. Morrisey and Mr. Jenkins declined to attack Mr. Blankenship for his role in the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster, the deadliest U.S. mine disaster in four decades, killing 29 men. Mr. Blankenship led the company that owned the mine and was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to break safety laws, a misdemeanor.
Raising that dark history has been left to the national GOP forces believed to be behind the Mountain Families PAC, an organization created last month that has invested more than $700,000 attacking Mr. Blankenship on television. A spokesman for the Senate GOP’s most powerful super PAC declined to confirm or deny a connection to the group.
For voters, Mr. Blankenship remains a deeply polarizing figure.
Mr. Blankenship calls himself a West Virginian but had his supervised release transferred last August to federal officials in Nevada, where he has a six-bedroom home with his fiancee 20 miles from Las Vegas, in Henderson.
“It’s a friendly place and I like it,” said Mr. Blankenship, whose supervised release ends May 9, the day after the primary.
Stanley Stewart, a retired miner who was inside the Upper Big Branch mine when it blew up in 2010, calls Mr. Blankenship “ruthless, cold-blooded, cold-hearted, self-centered.”
“I feel that if anybody voted for Don Blankenship, they may as well stick a knife in their back and twist it, because that’s exactly what he’ll do,” Mr. Stewart said.