West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey took home the GOP nomination for Senate from the state Tuesday night, defeating bombastic energy baron Don Blankenship and Republican Rep. Evan Jenkins.
Morrisey, the state’s attorney general since 2013, won while Blankenship fell into third place despite a surge in the polls by the recently imprisoned energy executive, who saw a boost after the Fox News debate last Tuesday.
Morrisey will now take on Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., in November in a fight Republicans are hopeful about. Many were concerned that Blankenship would steal the nomination and take the race off the board in November for the party as they look to keep hold of and possibly increase their majority in the upper chamber.
Throughout the race, Morrisey, a recent transplant to the state from New Jersey, had traded barbs with Jenkins, who was thought to be the top contender for the nomination. While he pitched himself as a conservative warrior and a steadfast opponent of the Obama administration during the first four years of his time in the state AG’s office.
Jenkins repeatedly attacked Morrisey as a carpetbagger and argued that he did not have West Virginia values at heart, leading to a back-and-forth between the two not unlike that of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in the 2016 GOP primary fight. The fight between the two also gave Blankenship room to move up in the polls, before Morrisey took direct aim at the longtime energy executive.
Blankenship, multi-millionaire, was released from prison last year for his role in the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion that killed 29 back in 2010.
Morrisey’s victory is also a big victory for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whose allies had pushed for an anyone-but-Blankenship nominee, especially in the wake of attacks by the candidate against the Kentucky Republican. Blankenship took to referring to McConnell as “Cocaine Mitch” and leveled attacks against the family of his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, calling them “China people.”
McConnell’s push was aided by President Trump Monday, who called on West Virginia GOP primary voters to “remember Alabama” and vote for either Morrisey or Jenkins, both of whom flanked him at a tax reform event in early April.
“Congratulations to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey on securing the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate this evening,” Steven Law of the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund said in a statement. “General Morrissey was a champion for West Virginia coal when Barack Obama was trying to run it out of business and Joe Manchin was busy unsuccessfully peddling Hillary Clinton to West Virginia voters. We look forward to standing shoulder to shoulder with Patrick Morrisey to defeat Joe Manchin this November.”
Trump won West Virginia by 40 points in 2016 and could be helpful to Morrisey against Manchin this year.
Republicans had been fretting in recent days about the possibility of a Blankenship win and compared it to that of Judge Roy Moore’s victory over appointed interim Sen. Luther Strange, R-Ala., last fall. Moore ended up losing to Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., in the general election after being hit with allegations of sexual misconduct with women as young as age 14.
