Coal isn’t what it used to be in West Virginia, but its grip on the state’s politics has lingered. Of the three major Republican candidates for the Senate, one blocked President Obama’s effort to shut down coal mining, another says coal is a “God-given resource” designed for human use, and the third is a coal baron who spent a year in prison for safety violations after a 2010 explosion in a mine he owned killed 29 miners.
A generation or two ago, West Virginia was a one-issue state—coal. That’s no longer true. There are a bit over 20,000 coal miners today, fewer than half the number there were in the early 1970s and a far cry from the peak of 125,000 miners in 1950. But coal is still on the state’s mind. When President Obama sought to kill off what was left of the industry on environmental grounds, and Hillary Clinton declared miners would be losing their jobs, the state rebelled.
Almost overnight, West Virginia became a Republican state and Trump country. Since walloping Clinton 69 percent to 26 percent in 2016, the president has anointed West Virginia as his favorite state. He’s visited four times since the election, each time to the heaviest coal region in the southern counties of the state.
The GOP takeover is evident in the Senate primary on May 8. Three candidates—all political heavyweights—are roughly tied in the race to challenge Democratic senator Joe Manchin, whose popularity has been slipping.
When Trump appeared at an event in White Sulphur Springs in early April, he went out of his way to criticize Manchin. “I thought he would be helpful because he talks [that way],” Trump said. “But he votes against everything. And he voted against the tax cuts” and opposed the repeal of Obamacare.
Two of the Republican candidates—Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Congressman Evan Jenkins—flanked Trump on the dais. The third, mine owner Don Blankenship, didn’t attend. He was released from prison in 2017, is still on probation, and lives in a mansion in Las Vegas.
Morrisey, 50, is the most impressive of the candidates. West Virginia has lost population in recent years. But Morrisey migrated into the state in 2006. “I bought a house and fell in love with the state,” he told me. “It was not a life plan.” He had run unsuccessfully for the U.S. House in 2000 from his home state of New Jersey. He has fared better in West Virginia. In 2012, he defeated five-term incumbent Darrell McGraw, a Democrat, for attorney general and became the first Republican AG of West Virginia since 1933. He won reelection in 2016.
His impact on the state has been palpable. He has recruited a team of top-notch assistant AGs from around the country. Three are former Supreme Court law clerks. One of them, Tom Johnson, was recently appointed general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission.
Morrisey’s greatest success has been in court. He was an architect of the effort to halt the Obama-era Clean Power Plan from going into effect. The plan threatened to wipe out coal mining, but a historic stay by the Supreme Court stopped it, at least for now.
And last week, the Drug Enforcement Administration issued a regulation to stop pill dumping, which had allowed opioids to flood the state and spur a drug epidemic. Again, Morrisey was responsible. A lawsuit by the AG’s office prompted the DEA to act. “West Virginia is ground zero of the opioid crisis,” Morrisey’s Republican rival says. Correctly.
Jenkins, 57, raised the opioid issue with Trump in 2017 when he flew back to Washington from the Boy Scout Jamboree aboard Air Force One. For 20 years, Jenkins was a Democratic member of the state legislature before switching parties in 2013. The next year, he ousted 19-term House member Nick Rahall, a Democrat. Rahall became “the second-longest serving congressman ever defeated in a general election,” Jenkins says.
He has tied himself closely to Trump, having endorsed him just before the West Virginia primary in May 2016. He says Morrisey was a reluctant Trump supporter who balked at voting for him at the GOP convention. “He drove the Trump people crazy,” Jenkins says. That means Morrisey was like millions of other Republicans, arriving late in Trump World.
In White Sulphur Springs, Trump polled the crowd on their preference between Jenkins and Morrisey. Jenkins got louder applause, but Morrisey explained to Trump that was because they were in Jenkins’s congressional district.
Blankenship, 68, comes from a different universe from Morrisey and Jenkins. He’s richer, with an estimated net worth of $40 million. A coal executive for 30 years, he left the state after the mine explosion and returned last year after his release from prison. He had been convicted of conspiracy to violate mine safety and health standards.
The conviction is the basis for his campaign. He blames President Obama for his prosecution and jail term, and for trying to kill coal. He’s eager to take advantage of the state’s antipathy to Obama.
Will this strategy work? Probably not, but nobody knows for certain. Primary polls are unreliable. Blankenship has one thing working for him—money. And he’s used it wisely on TV ads, which are well produced. Still, the best guess is there aren’t many Republicans willing to vote for an ex-con. Besides, he couldn’t beat Manchin.
Jenkins and Morrisey could. Jenkins’s district is Democratic country. Manchin has to do very well there or it’s curtains. Jenkins would keep Manchin from rolling up the votes. And Jenkins would get help from Trump. West Virginia is the one state where he may be able to steer voters to a candidate other than himself. Plus Trump loves to go there and detests Manchin.
The case for Morrisey is more subtle. He should benefit from the fact that primary turnout is small and dominated by conservatives. Morrisey has statewide name recognition. He ought to present a strong contrast with Manchin, conservative vs. liberal. Jenkins, after voting with Manchin in the legislature for years, cannot match Morrisey on that.
Morrisey lacks one indispensable thing: a campaign issue that stirs voters, that brings them out of their seats. To beat Manchin, that’s what is needed. Manchin is a very skillful politician. He’s “a sincere Bill Clinton,” says Steve Law of the Senate Leadership Fund. Or maybe he’s just learned how to pretend.
Manchin has a big, bleeding flaw. While West Virginia was falling and coal was in jeopardy, Manchin took a pass. He was no help. He was hobnobbing with Hillary Clinton and going to meetings of the Chuck Schumer leadership team. There’s a long list of words to describe his position, starting with beatable.
