Blankenship defiant as he concedes W.Va. Senate race
Ohio, Ind. and N.C. also held primaries
West Virginia Republican Don Blankenship on Tuesday night conceded the Republican Senate nomination as state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey outdistanced the convicted ex-coal executive, congressman Evan Jenkins and three others in the race.
But Mr. Blankenship remained defiant until the end amid the first major Senate primaries of 2018 on Tuesday in four states. The results had big implications for Republicans’ efforts to hold the Senate in November. And Ohio saw perhaps the first big result of Democrats’ effort to win back key governors’ races in hopes of preventing GOP redistricting dominance after the 2020 election.
Mr. Blankenship said Tuesday that he “didn’t get it done” and “failed West Virginians,” but he warned that “the Republican Party needs to be careful about being hijacked.”
Mr. Morrisey will face incumbent Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin in November. Both parties view the election as key to Senate control for the next two years.
The primary became a test of President Donald Trump’s clout. He — along with establishment Republicans — came out strongly against Mr. Blankenship, who spent time in federal prison for his role in a 2010 mine explosion that killed 29 miners.
Mr. Blankenship told a group of supporters Tuesday that he still believes he was railroaded and mistreated by federal prosecutors.
He has used racially charged language in his advertising. Washington Republicans had worried Mr. Blankenship would lose a race against Mr. Manchin in November.
For his part, Mr. Morrisey — a two-term attorney general — promoted his record of challenging policies under the administration of former President Barack Obama.
Mr. Morrisey deflected criticism of his past lobbying ties to the pharmaceutical industry and his roots in New Jersey, where he lost a 2000 congressional race.
The four states that had primaries Tuesday — West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina,
all of which voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. While their races were offering some insight into Republican voters’ mood two years later, Democrats also had their eyes on voting.
In Ohio, Obama-era consumer agency head Richard Cordray won the Democratic nomination for Ohio governor despite a surprisingly rigorous challenge from former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
Tuesday’s win by the former consumer watchdog under Mr. Obama buoyed Democratic hopes of reclaiming control of a critical battleground state, where Republican Gov. John Kasich is term-limited.
At the same time, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine won the Republican primary for governor, sending one of the state’s best-known politicians into the fall contest to replace Mr. Kasich.
The paths of the two political veterans will come full circle in November as they square off for Ohio governor just as they did for attorney general eight years ago.
Their aggressive opponents accused them of not being either conservative or liberal enough.
Mr. Cordray led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump. He featured Mr. Obama in his ads and campaigned with Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who created the bureau.
Mr. Kucinich is a feisty former nine-term congressman and Cleveland mayor who energized voters with an antigun, pro-environment platform. He attacked Mr. Cordray as an “establishment Democrat” willing to compromise his principles to special interests.
As for Mr. DeWine, his victory Tuesday left him damaged from a bitter and nasty primary in which Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor likened him to Democrats Obama and Hillary Clinton and questioned his loyalty to Mr. Trump.
The 71-year-old Mr. DeWine is a moderate Republican who served two terms in the U.S. Senate. But Ms. Taylor forced him to tack to the right to win the GOP nomination.
Mr. DeWine was endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party and was bolstered by his partnership with Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, who dropped his own governor bid to become Mr. DeWine’s running mate.
At the same time, an independently wealthy businessman who largely self-financed his own campaign has beaten two sitting congressmen to become Indiana’s Republican nominee for Senate.
Republican primary voters picked Mike Braun to challenge Joe Donnelly, who is considered one of the Senate’s most vulnerable Democrats.
Elsewhere, U.S. Rep. Robert Pittenger lost a Republican primary for his seat in North Carolina to the Rev. Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor he only narrowly beat two years ago.
But amid the results in Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina, none of Tuesday’s other contests was expected to have more impact on the midterm landscape than West Virginia, where Mr. Blankenship embraced Mr. Trump’s tactics — casting himself as a victim of government persecution and seizing on xenophobia, if not racism — to stand out in a crowded Republican field.
The state’s Republican electorate is overwhelmingly white, working class and rural, in contrast to other states that feature more suburban voters. Mr. Trump defeated Democrat Clinton by 42 points here less than two years ago, but there are far more Democrats than Republicans registered to vote.
The stakes were high for a Republican Party bracing for major losses in this fall’s midterm elections. A victory on Tuesday for Mr. Blankenship could have made it hard for Republicans to gain a Senate seat in this deep-red state in November. But the anti-establishment fervor unleashed by Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign had proved difficult for GOP leaders to rein in.
Mr. Trump and his allies had invested significant resources in an effort to influence another high-profile Senate race recently as well.
Last year, Mr. Trump endorsed Republican Sen. Luther Strange for the Alabama seat vacated by Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions. Former state Supreme Court Judge Roy Moore won the GOP runoff and was defeated by Democrat Doug Jones after Mr. Moore was accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls decades earlier.
In that race, Mr. Trump ultimately endorsed Mr. Moore.
Mr. Trump and his party leaders had been more united against Mr. Blankenship in recent weeks. The head of the Senate Republican campaign arm highlighted Mr. Blankenship’s criminal history. And a group allied with the national GOP, known as Mountain Families PAC, spent more than $1.2 million in attack ads against Mr. Blankenship.
The retired businessman was released less than a year ago from a prison term for the 2010 mine explosion. 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.
He has repeatedly blamed government regulators for the disaster, casting himself as the victim of an overzealous Obama-era Justice Department — an argument Mr. Trump regularly uses to dismiss federal agents investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia.
The Senate candidate took aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in an ad claiming that Mr. McConnell has created jobs for “China people” and that his “China family” has given him millions of dollars.
Mr. McConnell’s wife is U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, born in Taiwan.
But even as Mr. Blankenship rebuffed Mr. Trump’s criticism this week, he described himself as “Trumpier than Trump” and played up his outsider credentials.