Republicans are panicking as internal polls show Don Blankenship, a coal baron who spent time in jail for a mining disaster that killed 29 workers, surging into the lead in the West Virginia Senate GOP primary over Attorney General Patrick Morrissey and Congressman Evan Jenkins.
The results of an internal campaign poll conducted for one rival Senate campaign on Saturday and Sunday were: Blankenship 31 percent, Jenkins 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent.
The results of another internal poll conducted Friday and Saturday were: Blankenship 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent, Jenkins 14 percent. Two weeks earlier, the same rival campaign found Blankenship at 14 percent, Morrissey at 29 percent, and Jenkins at 26 percent.
Politico reported Saturday night that internal polling showed Blankenship surging, but the specific numbers are being reported for the first time by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
President Donald Trump, who overwhelmingly carried the state in 2016, weighed in on Twitter Monday morning: “To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State…No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!”
“If it’s truly a two-point race, that Trump tweet is going to make a difference,” one West Virginia Senate campaign official tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. What explains the Blankenship surge? “The debate [Monday on Fox News] helped him because Morrissey and Jenkins did what’s kind of playing out on TV–they’re slicing each other up,” says the campaign official. “Don got to be a one-liner folksy guy.” Second, Blankenship has taken up all the news coverage in the race by labeling Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as “cocaine Mitch” and launching racist attacks against McConnell for creating jobs for “China people.” (McConnell’s wife, an American citizen, was born in Taiwan.)
McConnell’s allies have spent over $1.3 million in an effort to defeat Blankenship, while Democrats have spent at least $1.2 million to knock down Jenkins, as The Washington Examiner’s Al Weaver reported last week.
As Fred Barnes noted recently in his report on the West Virginia Senate race, primary polls are often unreliable. But the consistent pattern of a Blankenship surge in the polls of both rival campaigns has Republicans spooked.
If Blankenship manages to win despite Trump’s opposition, it will be a strong data point for Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie’s theory that many Republican primary voters are simply “voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race.”
