CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin beat back the insurgent candidacy of Republican state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in a tighter-than-expected race that just one month ago had Manchin up well over double digits over the state attorney general.
Manchin ultimately won 49.7 percent of the vote to Morrisey’s 46.2 percent, with Libertarian Rusty Hollen getting 4.2 percent. It is the tightest win in Manchin’s three decade career in Mountaineer politics.
Tuesday night marked the third time Manchin has run for the Senate seat since 2010 when he won the special election after the death of Sen. Robert C. Byrd and was elected again in 2012.
The battle between Manchin and Morrisey was more a proxy battle between Manchin and himself, as President Trump loomed large in the race visiting the state three times since August including just a handful of days before Tuesday in Huntington.
Both Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr. also spent time campaigning for Morrisey in the closing weeks of the election.
Trump won the Mountaineer State by a whopping 42 percentage points in 2016, the largest state victory in the country. Despite the voter registration favoring Democrats by ten percentage points, the growth of unaffiliated voters has jumped to 22 percentage points, which Manchin was able to hold.
West Virginia, once the heart of the Democratic Party, is now controlled by Republicans who hold five of the six statewide offices with Manchin as the lone Democrat holding a statewide seat.
Despite an onslaught of Trump visits — there were three since August — Manchin lived to return to the Senate.
Manchin kept his cool and his head down on the campaign trail in the closing weeks of the race, doing retail stop after retail stop, motorcycles rides across the states and more apple festivals than Johnny Appleseed.
“I could not have won this race without each and every person in West Virginia,” said an exhausted Manchin, who said he lost his voice during his cross-state motorcycle race.
“You stood tall,” he told his supporters. “What West Virginia told the president tonight was, ‘Mr. President we want our senator, not your senator.”
“Mr. President, I want you to be the president of the United States, not the divided states,” he said.
Manchin took a jab at his former friend, current Gov. Jim Justice, telling him to stop trying to be the president of West Virginia and start being the governor of West Virginia.
Before Manchin took to the stage, the Martin Luther King Jr. Male Chorus gave a rousing rendition of the National Anthem.
Manchin said in an interview after his victory that he wanted to send a message to the White House that West Virginia voters decide who their Senator will be, not the president.
“This race was all about the people in this state and not a national race decided at the top,” he said.
Manchin credited how he addressed the critically important local issues that impact West Virginia voters as the key to holding on to his seat.
“The impact of the opioid crisis, senior services, taking care of our veterans, job creation, I have a record in taking on those issues and voters remembered that,” he said.
Manchin’s victory party soon turned into an atmosphere of a family wedding as scores of cousins, children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, dances to the selection picked by DJ “Sincerity” that ranged from Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” to Earth, Wind and Fire’s “Celebration.”
The room paused and united to sing a heartfelt rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads” as he was joined on stage by the men who rode motorcycles across the state with him on Monday.
