A former coal CEO’s post-prison rise is scrambling the GOP battle to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.).
Don Blankenship, released from jail less than a year ago, now appears to be within striking distance of the party’s nomination.
Strategists — and even his primary opponents — acknowledge he’s managed to turn an expected showdown between Rep. Evan Jenkins (W.Va.) and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey into a three-way fight with roughly a month to go until the May 8 primary election.
“It is a weird little race right now, [but] it’s looking like a legitimate three-person race,” said a national GOP strategist who is monitoring the Senate fight.
Blankenship’s anti-establishment message is resonating in a state that has turned increasingly red. Recent internal polling from Morrisey and Jenkins place him in second place — with first place varying based on the candidate releasing the polling.
“I’m an anti-establishment. Have been long before I ever heard of Trump or looked at politics,” Blankenship told The Hill outside a candidate forum in Martinsburg, W. Va.
It’s a dramatic turnaround for a man who has been out of prison for less than a year. Blankenship was sentenced to a year after the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine exploded, killing 29 miners. Government investigators concluded the blast was caused by Blankenship’s company’s failure to clean up coal dust sufficiently.
In Blankenship’s version, he was targeted by the Obama administration and Manchin, who said following the accident that Blankenship had “blood on his hands” While in jail, Blankenship published a manifesto describing himself a “political prisoner.”
“The people that are knowledgeable of the mining and what happened at UBB know that … if anyone blew up the mine, the government did, and they have the privilege of being able to investigate themselves ” he said, when asked how frequently the issue is brought up as he’s campaigned around the state.
Blankenship’s rise has been fueled, in part, by deep pockets that have allowed him to crisscross the state and flood the inexpensive media market with TV ads. Blankenship had the airwaves largely to himself until last month.
“I’ve lived in the poor house. I’ve lived in the big house. … I’ve got more experience, more understanding of what it takes to turn this country around than those who have been in Washington drinking the swamp water,” he said.
His ascendance is setting off alarm bells in Washington. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told The New York Times earlier this year that he didn’t want Blankenship to win the primary. Trump won the state by more than 40 points in 2016, suggesting it should be an easy win for the GOP — but Republicans worry Blankenship would be too controversial to win in the general election.
Republicans have grown increasingly worried about their chances to hold on to the Senate in November, making a pick-up in West Virginia crucial to the majority. McConnell told the Kentucky Today editorial board that Republicans “don’t know whether it’s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5” storm they’ll face.
But they’ve also acutely aware of the Alabama Senate race, where Republicans went all-in fighting conservative firebrand Roy Moore in the primary, only for the strategy to backfire.
Patrick Hickey, a professor at West Virginia University, added that Blankenship is a “very polarizing figure” but an “anti-Obama argument in general is something people buy into” in West Virginia.
“A lot of people outside of West Virginia look at this guy who did a year in prison … so they’re like, how can this be a serious candidate?” said Mike Plante, a Democratic strategist based in West Virginia. “[But] the idea that the cultural elites are out against me … finds fertile ground.”
The GOP strategist acknowledged that voters are wary of outside involvement in Senate primary races. Blankenship, meanwhile, predicted such attacks would be a “positive” and said outside groups “don’t really carry much weight in the election.”
A spokesman for McConnell declined to comment. But Blankenship says the tight-lipped GOP leader won’t support him because “he doesn’t want the swamp to be drained.”
Blankenship added that, if elected, he wouldn’t support McConnell to be majority leader, if the party keeps control of the Senate, or GOP leader, if they lose the majority.
“I have no intention of working with the party. The parties are too powerful,” he said.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is in contact with each of the GOP campaigns and, with the lack of a GOP incumbent, hasn’t picked a side.
