CHARLESTON, W.Va. — “You made history tonight. West Virginia made history tonight,” a hoarse Joe Manchin told the crowd on election night after voters gave him another term in the Senate.
“West Virginia stood tall tonight,” he said, adding: “Mr. President, we want our senator, not your senator.”
For a conservative Democrat who voted for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee just last month, this was a tougher balancing act than Manchin made it seem — and one that other red-state Democrats might learn from.
While his U.S. Senate colleagues in Missouri, Indiana, and Florida fell to Republican challengers in tough contests, Manchin didn’t. Despite the three visits by President Trump since August, tons of money and a vice presidential visit, the Manchin fire wall didn’t crumble.
“Eight visits, Salena,” Manchin said of the total. “Eight visits. Since he’s been elected, he’s been in my state eight times. Three times just to campaign for my opponent. Then, he sent in the vice president, I think, three times. Then, his family came in. He gave it his all.”
Manchin said his victory was a victory against the president — but he didn’t pick the fight. “He’s the one that injected himself into my race.” And it was the tightest victory in any of the six statewide races he has been in: one for secretary of state, two for governor, and three for this seat.
Will Manchin still be able to work across the aisle with Republicans after framing his re-election as a referendum on the president? “Of course, I will. I will work with the president. I will work with my Senate colleagues,” he says, pointing to Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman as an example; the two will, Manchin says, be working on an important piece of legislation for miners’ pensions.
Manchin’s political career in West Virginia began when he ran for state delegate in 1982, serving one term, then running for state Senate. The son of a small businessman and onetime mayor of Farmington, W.Va., he then ran in a crowded primary for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1996.
He lost — the only loss in his political career.
He ran and won the race for secretary of state in 2000 and ran again for governor in 2004 and won. He ran and won again for that seat in 2008. “It’s still the greatest job I’ve ever had,” he said.
Manchin appointed Carte Goodwin, a young man from a prominent Mountaineer family, to Robert Byrd’s seat when the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate — and its longest-serving member — died in 2010.
Goodwin announced immediately he would not be a candidate in the special election for the seat, easing Manchin’s path. It marked the first of three times he would run and win the seat.
“Thank goodness people have known me, and they know that everything I am is because of my state. So, there’s nothing that they have to think, will Joe always help West Virginia? Is it all about West Virginia? Because that’s all it’s about.”
That — and compromise. “It’s become so tribal and people are just thirsty for people that want to make things work,” he says. “There’s an element of all society that likes to see turmoil and clashes and on and on and on. But I think the majority of the people still want to see some civility, some decorum in how we handle ourselves, and trying to do it in a really professional and representative of the state that you do represent.”
So, why did he keep his seat and others fell? Was it his vote for Justice Brett Kavanaugh? “Maybe,” he said. “That is part of it, but it is also because I never lose sight of who placed me in the Senate, and that is the people of this state, I am as much a part of them as they are a part of me.”
Manchin’s decision to be the lone Democrat to support Kavanaugh came after a particularly combative and vicious nomination battle. Maine Sen. Susan Collins was the deciding vote, but Manchin’s vote wasn’t insignificant; he crossed party lines and his vote was symbolic in that Kavanaugh did not require Vice President Mike Pence break a tie.
Manchin is now the only statewide elected politician in West Virginia with a “D” after his name. Gov. Jim Justice, who he vocally backed in a Democratic primary for governor just two years ago, changed parties six months after winning the governorship. Justice never called to tell his friend he was switching, and never called to tell his friend he would be firing his wife, Gayle, from her post as secretary of education a year later.
“I’ve never seen politics change a human being the way it has Jim Justice,” he sighed, adding later in the conversation: “I thought we were friends, but I guess I was fooled.”
Thirty-plus family members joined Manchin on stage last Tuesday: children, siblings (he’s one of five), grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and their wives and children. The day after the election, life went back to normal: “Oh, we had chores to do, we ate a lot and just visited with each other.”
Neighbors and friends stopped by to congratulate him: “I think I held my seat more because I was governor here, and when you are a governor people really get to know you in a different way than as a senator. People really had a good look at me. They knew what was in my heart and soul and how I operated every day. So, they had really a good look-see of who Joe Manchin is.”
“And, you know, they know if it is for real or not. And they’ve not forgotten that, and they know that everything I do is going to be with everything I’ve got in me,” he said.
“That, I think, is why I am still here.”
