Sen. Manchin, other state reps have promoted coal interests
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Joe Manchin’s impending departure from the U.S. Senate marks the end of an era for West Virginia’s conservative Democrats, who for decades held outsize influence in Washington. It’s the latest sign of the party’s steady decline in the state that often has paralleled the demise of Appalachian coal.
Manchin, 76, is the last in a line of formidable Democratic senators from the Mountain State who promoted coal interests at the national level. He stayed true to a path set by stalwarts like Robert C. Byrd, Jennings Randolph and Jay Rockefeller, even as he navigated the shifting terrain of national energy policy.
While Democrats moved aggressively away from fossil fuels in an effort to combat the threat of climate change, Manchin pressed for an “all of the above” energy policy intended to maintain coal as at least a component of the nation’s energy portfolio. He presented himself to voters as the reasonable moderate between two extremes.
Manchin has played that role to the hilt during President Joe Biden’s administration, on everything from infrastructure and prescription drug prices to health care aid, as Democrats cling to a 51-49 Senate majority after narrowly losing their House edge last fall.
He had faced a difficult path forward to reelection next year, in a prospective matchup against popular Republican Gov. Jim Justice, in a state former president Donald Trump carried by nearly 40 percentage points in 2020. Biden’s clean energy agenda could stall if Republicans retake the Senate or be replaced if the Democrat is unseated.
Manchin worked with Biden and President Barack Obama on energy policy, embracing clean energy subsidies and pressing fellow Democrats to invest in clean coal technology and other alternative ways to keep miners employed as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He was a longtime promoter of mine safety and federal benefits and regulations to protect coal miners with black lung disease. Some advocates have said he did not do enough and sometimes blocked more aggressive measures or looked to limit their impact on the industry.
In West Virginia, the national party’s aggressive move toward clean energy often left Manchin and other Democrats vulnerable to Republican attacks, including when Trump campaigned in 2016 on a promise to end what he described as Obama’s “war on coal” and to save miners’ jobs.
Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, openly acknowledged coal jobs were going away and would need to be replaced, causing a political backlash that further damaged the standing of Democrats in West Virginia. Manchin never defended the remark but was criticized by West Virginia Republicans for what his party’s nominee said.
Trump did not bring back the industry. The number of coal jobs in West Virginia fell from 11,561 at the start of his presidency to 11,418 at the end in 2021, slowing coal’s precipitous decline but not stopping it. Still, Democrats like Manchin often found themselves targeted as enemies of coal in a state where it was still widely seen as a cornerstone of the economy.
Ironically, Manchin’s Senate