Tag: 2018 Primary Election

More than 50,000 Votes Cast in West Virginia's Early Voting

West Virginia’s secretary of state says more than 50,000 West Virginians have taken advantage of the early voting period this election cycle.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that as of early Friday, 50,225 ballots had been cast across West Virginia.

Secretary of State Mac Warner says vote totals from his office aren’t official. He says those totals only include the early votes and absentee votes reported by each county and entered into the State Voter Registration System.

The unofficial statewide voting totals already exceed the number of people who voted early during the 2014 midterm primary election. During that election, 45,143 people voted during the early voting period, according to data from the Secretary of State’s Office.

The last chance to vote early before the May 8 primary was Saturday.

Early GOP Primaries Shaping Up as Rightward March with Trump

As primary season kicks into high gear, Republicans are engaged in nomination fights that are pulling the party to the right, leaving some leaders worried their candidates will be out of a step with the broader electorate in November.

Primaries in four states on Tuesday, all in places Donald Trump carried in 2016, showcase races in which GOP candidates are jockeying to be seen as the most conservative, the most anti-Washington and the most loyal to the president. It’s evidence of the onetime outsider’s deepening imprint on the Republican Party he commandeered less than two year ago.

In Indiana, Republicans will choose between three Senate candidates who have spent much of the race praising the Trump and bashing each other. In West Virginia, a former federal convict and coal baron has taken aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with racially charged accusations of corruption.

In Ohio, Republicans are certain to nominate someone more conservative than outgoing GOP Gov. John Kasich, a 2016 presidential candidate, moderate and frequent Trump critic. Even Kasich’s former running mate, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, has pledged to unwind some of Kasich’s centrist policies, including the expansion of the Medicaid government insurance program following Democrats’ 2010 health insurance overhaul.

With Trump’s job approval hanging around 40 percent and the GOP-run Congress less than half that, the abandonment of the middle has some Republicans raising alarms.

“The far left and the far right always think they are going to dominate these elections,” said John Weaver, a Trump critic and top strategist to Kasich, who has been become a near-pariah in the primary to succeed him.

“You may think it’s wise in a primary to handcuff yourself to the president,” Weaver said. “But when the ship goes down, you may not be able to get the cuffs off.”

North Carolina Republicans will weigh in on the fate of Republican Rep. Robert Pittenger, facing a primary challenger who almost upset him two years ago. Pittenger features Trump prominently in his campaign. Challenger Mark Harris, a prominent Charlotte pastor, has tried to turn the table, saying Pittenger is a creature of Washington who refuses to help Trump “drain that swamp.”

Tough primaries certainly don’t have to be disastrous. They often gin up voter attention and engagement, and can signal strong turnout in the general election.

Dallas Woodhouse, who runs the North Carolina Republican Party, said candidates benefit because they must “make their arguments and voters become more aware of the election.”

Trump and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton each survived internal party battles in 2016. Clinton won the national popular vote that year, but in the states that mattered most — Ohio and North Carolina, among them — wary Republicans gravitated back to Trump while Clinton struggled to hit the usual Democratic base targets.

Few national Republicans look at West Virginia and see helpful enthusiasm.

Former coal executive Don Blankenship has accused McConnell of creating jobs for “China people” and charges that the senator’s “China family” has given him millions of dollars. McConnell’s wife is Trump’s transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, who was born in Taiwan.

Indiana Senate candidates are trying to appeal to Trump voters by adopting the president’s harsh immigration rhetoric and penchant for personal insults. The candidates have even channeled Trump by assigning derisive nicknames to one another: “Lyin'” Todd Rokita, Luke “Missing” Messer and “Tax Hike” Mike Braun.

In several of the Tuesday primaries, Democrats are watching with delight, and having less trouble aligning behind nominees. The chief beneficiaries would be Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, both sitting on healthy campaign accounts after avoiding their own primary fights.

The leading Democrat for the North Carolina seat, Marine veteran Dan McCready, has raised almost $2 million, slightly more than Harris and Pittenger combined, in a district Trump won by about 12 percentage points. “He will absolutely make this competitive,” Harris said.

In the Ohio governor’s race, liberal former Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former state Attorney General Richard Cordray have managed to avoid open warfare. Cordray, who also led the federal consumer watchdog agency launched under President Barack Obama, is the favorite.

Republicans watched their state party, led by pro-Trump leadership that replaced Kasich allies after the 2016 elections, endorse state Attorney General Mike Dewine, while Taylor has effectively shunned an earlier endorsement from Kasich.

“If Ohio Republicans are divided into Trump Republicans and Kasich Republicans, the Trump Republicans have won,” said the state Democratic chairman, David Pepper. “That helps us.”

Gallup measures Trump with an 89 percent job approval rating among Republicans nationally, but 35 percent among independents and 42 percent overall. Historically, presidents below 50 percent watch their party suffer steep losses in midterm elections.

Democrats must flip about two dozen Republican-held seats to reclaim a House majority, and they must do it with Republican-run legislatures having drawn many districts to the GOP’s advantage. In North Carolina, Harris said the makeup of the district, which stretches from Republican areas of metro Charlotte east through small towns and rural counties, makes his pro-Trump, anti-establishment message a primary and November winner.

Senate Democrats are just two seats shy of a majority, but must defend 26 incumbents, 10 in states where Trump won, including Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia. Republicans are defending nine seats, just one in a state Trump lost.

Outmatched in Experience and Funds, Swearengin Remains Undeterred in Primary Against Manchin

Updated: Friday, May 4, 2018 at 12:00 p.m.

President Donald Trump won West Virginia by 42 percentage points in 2016. He’s holding on to high approval ratings in the state and conservatives paint Democrat incumbent U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin as vulnerable. Long known as a moderate Democrat, Manchin has been in West Virginia politics for three decades. With the seat up for grabs this year, the national spotlight has been on the GOP primary — in which hopefuls are trying to align themselves with Trump.

 

But this year, the Democratic stalwart in West Virginia politics faces his own primary challenger in progressive Paula Jean Swearengin — an activist-turned-candidate who says Manchin hasn’t done enough to retain the party nomination.

 

When the president visited White Sulphur Springs in early April, the stop was billed as a roundtable discussion highlighting the effects of recently passed tax-reform legislation. With GOP Senate hopefuls Evan Jenkins and Patrick Morrisey flanking Trump, the event veered toward attacks on Manchin and his no vote on the tax bill.

“The Democrats have a problem. I mean, look at your senator. He voted against. Joe — he voted against. It was bad. I thought he would be helpful,” Trump said at the event.

Overall, though, Manchin has voted with the Trump administration more than 61 percent of the time — including legislation and nominations, according to Senate records. He says he votes based on the issues themselves and what’s best for West Virginia.

 

“I say to the people of West Virginia you’ve hired me. I work for you. I do not work for the president but I want to work with him and I try every day and I will try,” Manchin said in a recent meeting with the media.

That record puts him at odds with the national Democratic Party. Manchin has voted against a majority of Senate Democrats 29.3 percent of the time in the 115th Congress, according to Propublica’s Represent, a web app that tallies congressional voting records. He ranks first among all senators in voting against his party — with the average Senate Democrat breaking against the majority of the party’s vote 10.1 percent of the time.

 

He landed in Washington after winning a special election following the death of Robert C. Byrd in 2010. Since then, Manchin has touted himself as willing to work across party lines to compromise.

 

“I don’t look at Republicans as my enemy, I look at them as my friends and my colleagues — and we’re all in this together. You’ve got to be able to find a pathway for it,” Manchin said. “For people to take a hard line on one side or the other — whether it’s the hard right or the hard left  — you cannot get anything accomplished.”

 

But it’s those attempts to reach across the aisle and frequent voting with the Republican majority that is in large part what drew Manchin’s primary challenger into the race.

“He calls himself a West Virginia Democrat, but I’m not sure if he knows what that means,” said Paula Jean Swearengin, a native of Mullens, West Virginia who identifies as a coal miner’s daughter and coal miner’s granddaughter.

“The reason to take him on is because he’s not adhering to the platform of the Democratic Party and he’s not serving the working class,” she said.

After asking Manchin in person for help with the economy in southern West Virginia and to tackle environmental issues like water quality, Swearengin says she felt unheard and overlooked.

She took her pleas to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders when the Vermont politician made a stop last spring in McDowell County for a taping of a town hall on MSNBC’s ‘All In with Chris Hayes.’

“The reason that I went to go see Bernie Sanders is because I was begging him for hope. I mean, I’ve begged for this state for years and I admired him because he was the only senator to sit down with me and talk to me like I was a human being,” Swearengin said.

Swearengin is backed by Brand New Congress, a political action committee established by former staffers and supporters of Sanders’ campaign for president in 2016. The group is aiming to run progressive, working-class candidates around the country in hopes of combatting a political environment they say is dominated by big money.

“[The intent] of this nation was to have a diverse set of people in any and all walk of governments. It wasn’t designed to have paid-for, polished politicians to represent us. This nation was built by the people for the people and of the people,” she said.

Many say Swearengin faces an uphill battle to beat Manchin for the Democratic nomination. Beyond name recognition, Manchin’s fundraising efforts have outmatched Swearengin’s by more than 30 to 1. She’s raised nearly $200,000 to Manchin’s $6 million.

Swearengin remains undeterred. Despite identifying as a coal miner’s daughter, she’s hoping to take on the industry that she says has wreaked havoc on where she grew up and still lives.

“There’s no reason as a coal miner’s daughter that I should have to beg for something so basic as a clean glass of water. At the same time, we see coal miners that want to just feed their families. And we’ve heard that propaganda tree hugger versus coal miner. It’s even been labeled environmentalist before and that’s not it,” Swearengin explained.

“We we want it all. There’s no reason that we can’t have basic human rights and, like I said,  we don’t even have adequate sewage systems,” she added.

 

After teachers across West Virginia went on a nine-day strike calling for better pay and benefits, many observers of state politics have wondered if the labor movement — one that caught fire in other deeply red states — can translate to a wave of wins for progressives.

But as May 8 nears, Manchin’s campaign is focused more so on November and his potential challenger in the midterm election.

“My approach is this: I don’t pick my opponents. They picked to run and choose to run against me. And whoever that may be, we’ll put our records up hopefully and try to get the facts out — as hard as it is in today’s toxic atmosphere,” Manchin said.

Unlike the race for the GOP nomination for U.S. Senate, state Democrats did not arrange debates between Manchin and Swearengin. West Virginia Democratic Party chairwoman Belinda Biafore said no media outlet ever contacted the organization to organize a statewide debate.

Debates, Outside Spending & Trump: The Rundown on the Run-Up to the GOP U.S. Senate Primary

Just days before West Virginia’s primary, the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate has become increasingly aggressive and bold with attacks between candidates. Fueled by the national spotlight, a recent string of debates and high-dollar out-of-state spending, GOP Senate hopefuls have focused their bids on aligning themselves with President Donald Trump — who maintains a strong approval rating in the state at 61 points, according to March polling from Morning Consult.  

While earlier debates this primary season were relatively dry, a Tuesday night event in Morgantown hosted by Fox News delivered frequent sparring, particularly between Congressman Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. The two front-runners kept with a running theme of their respective campaigns: try to out-Trump the other.

“Who did you vote for in the May [2016] primary in West Virginia? I endorsed and voted for Donald Trump. Who did you vote for?” Jenkins quizzed Morrisey at the debate.

“I support the president and that’s why just a few weeks ago…just a few weeks ago when I sat next to the president — and Evan was there as well. We have a great relationship. We’ve worked together. I was proud to run ads with the president and support him at the convention floor. There were a lot of people that were not — Evan supported him the day before the primary. That’s no profile in courage,” Morrisey fired back.

Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship finishes one year of supervised released on Wednesday, the day after the election. Blankenship served a year in federal prison for conspiring to violate mine safety standards, a misdemeanor stemming from the Upper Big Branch disaster. The April 2010 explosion killed 29 miners.

Throughout his campaign, the former coal baron has maintained his innocence and — despite his status as a first-time candidate — has attempted to take credit for the Republican takeover in West Virginia politics in recent elections. At Tuesday’s Fox News debate, Blankenship used his past political influence to take shots at Jenkins and Morrisey.

“If it weren’t for me, neither these two guys would be up here. It’s funny that Pat [Morrisey] says he’s the only conservative on the stage,” Blankenship said Tuesday night. “Conservatives weren’t even popular in West Virginia until I caused them to be conservative by investing about five million dollars of my own money.”

Blankenship helped fund the election of a conservative state Supreme Court Justice in 2004 and has self-funded his bid for U.S. Senate.

But it’s not just the candidates themselves who have taken aim at their fellow GOP Senate hopefuls. Money from Super PACs — coming from Republicans and Democrats — has been fueling an onslaught of television and social media ads in recent weeks.

The pro-Morrisey 35th PAC has specifically targeted Jenkins, who appears to be leading the field according to a Fox News poll released last week. (The same poll also puts Trump’s approval rating in West Virginia at 87 percent.)

There’s also ads from Mountain Families PAC, a Republican-backed organization that has spent more than $700,000 trying to end Blankenship’s chances at scoring the nomination.

But perhaps the most peculiar outside player in the GOP primary is Duty and Country, a PAC whose treasurer is former U.S. Attorney and Democrat Booth Goodwin. He was responsible for trying the Blankenship case back in 2015. Duty and Country is taking on both Jenkins and Morrisey — seemingly to place Blankenship in what they hope is an insurmountable race against would-be Democratic nominee Manchin.

While Jenkins, Morrisey and Blankenship have been the most recognizable names in the race, three other Republicans are also vying for the party nomination. They’ve taken a similar strategy as their front-running counterparts: pro-Trump, anti-Manchin. While these contenders garnered fewer debate invites, they say they’re still in the running.

“You can throw all the big name recognition out the window because, at this point, it’s a four-man race. We’re within 12 points. The top four candidates are all crammed within 10 points of each other. There’s still a huge undecided vote out there around 30 percent,” said Tom Willis of Martinsburg, another candidate in the race.

According to the recent Fox News poll, the undecided vote for likely Republican voters actually sits at 41 percent in this race.

Willis touts his credentials as a small business owner and a green beret honors graduate, as a remedy for what he sees as failed policies in recent times.

“I think all of the candidates would agree that Joe Manchin has failed to provide leadership. He’s been in office in politics for 30 years and West Virginia remains near the end of all the different rankings. That’s a symptom of a lack of leadership,” he said.

Laid-off coal miner-turned-Senate candidate Bo Copley found himself thrust into the national spotlight during the 2016 presidential campaign, when he questioned Hillary Clinton’s comments on the coal industry. Copley sees the big spending by the top three candidates and their outside backers as a disadvantage in some ways, but also as an opportunity.

“People are tired of they type of typical politician that we have in these races. I’m not a politician, I’m just a West Virginia. I’m trying to make life better for those that live life like I do,” Copley said.

Copley argues that the top three front runners in Jenkins, Morrisey and Blankenship are too far removed from the lives of average West Virginians.

“One of the biggest problems we face is people don’t know that we’re in the race because we can’t advertise the way they do. I’ve seen so many comments on social media as I get if this is the only thing that we have to choose from I won’t vote. And we have to quickly say, ‘No, you have other options,’” he said.

Rounding out the field is Navy veteran and truck driver Jack Newbrough from Weirton?. At a debate last week in Wheeling, Newbrough drew attention for his comments about carrying a gun to the event, as well as his position on how to combat the opioid scourge that’s hit the country — he suggested waterboarding dealers. He, too, believes the GOP front-runners will be an easy target should they be nominated.

“Look at Joe Manchin — he has so much ammunition to go after them on because of their past. What’s he gonna go after me on? Either I’m a Navy vet or I’m a truck driver. I mean, there’s nothing else for him to say. I mean, if he get knocks me on either one of those me what else can he go with?” Newbrough said.

As for the millions of outside dollars coming into the primary, Newbrough says he’s happy he had no involvement.

“I mean I have not taken a dime from anybody. I don’t take any endorsements. I don’t take any donations — and I will refuse to take. I’d like to prove a point – you don’t need to raise millions of dollars to win a race. Do I think it’s going to happen? I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out May 8,” he said.

Polls are open on election day from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Early voting ends Saturday, May 5.

 

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Blankenship is finishing a year of probation. In fact, he is on supervised release following his release from prison last year.

 

 

Ex-Con Candidate Compounding GOP Woes in West Virginia

Republican Don Blankenship doesn't care if his party and his president don't think he can beat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin this fall.This former coal…

Republican Don Blankenship doesn’t care if his party and his president don’t think he can beat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin this fall.

This former coal mining executive, an ex-convict released from prison less than a year ago, is willing to risk his personal fortune and the GOP’s golden opportunity in West Virginia for the chance to prove them all wrong.

“I’ll get elected on my own merits,” Blankenship says.

There aren’t a lot of things that can sink Republicans’ hopes in the ruby red state that Donald Trump won by 42 percentage points in 2016, but Blankenship could well be one.

His candidacy is sending shudders down the spines of Republicans who are furiously working to ensure he is not their choice to take on Manchin in November. While Blankenship’s bid is a long shot, he’s testing whether a party led by an anti-establishment outsider can rein in its anti-establishment impulses.

“The establishment, no matter who you define it as, has not been creating jobs in West Virginia,” Blankenship said at a primary debate this past week.

Even before Blankenship emerged as a legitimate Republican candidate, West Virginia was a worry for some Republicans.

Former Gov. Manchin has held elected office in West Virginia for the better part of the past three decades, and he’s worked hard to cozy up to Trump and nurture a bipartisan brand.

He has voted with the Republican president more than he has opposed him, his office says, noting that the senator and Trump have collaborated on trade, environmental rules, gun violence and court nominations.

The alignment with Trump was so effective that former White House adviser Steve Bannon worried privately to colleagues that Trump might actually endorse the Democrat. An outright endorsement now is unlikely, but a Blankenship primary victory on May 8 could push Trump to help Manchin, at least indirectly, by ignoring West Virginia this fall.

The state has long been considered a prime pickup opportunity for Republicans, who hold a two-seat Senate majority that suddenly feels less secure given signs of Democratic momentum in Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee and elsewhere. If Democrats can win West Virginia, which gave Trump his largest margin of victory in the nation, they may have a slim chance at seizing the Senate majority.

Some of Trump’s most prominent conservative supporters, particularly those in Bannon’s network, have rallied behind state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a former Capitol Hill aide who was raised in New Jersey but has served as West Virginia’s top lawyer since 2013.

Rep. Evan Jenkins, a former Democrat, has highlighted his West Virginia roots and deep allegiance to Trump. Jenkins noted that Manchin missed a big chance to align himself with Trump on key issues such as taxes and health care.

“The president gave Joe Manchin every opportunity in the early weeks and months of his administration to vote the right way,” Jenkins said in an interview. “He voted wrong.”

But in interviews this past week, Morrisey and Jenkins declined to attack Blankenship for his role in the 2010 Upper Big Branch mine disaster, the deadliest U.S. mine disaster in four decades, killing 29 men. Blankenship led the company that owned the mine and was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to break safety laws, a misdemeanor.

Raising that dark history has been left to the national GOP forces believed to be behind the Mountain Families PAC, an organization created last month that has invested more than $700,000 attacking Blankenship on television. A spokesman for the Senate GOP’s most powerful super PAC declined to confirm or deny a connection to the group.

Trump has done his part to hurt Blankenship’s chances as well.

The president excluded Blankenship from a recent West Virginia stop, where Trump appeared with Jenkins on one side and Morrisey on the other. And Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who leads the Senate GOP’s national campaign efforts, had this to say to reporters when asked about Blankenship last week: “Do they let ankle bracelets get out of the house?”

For voters, Blankenship remains a deeply polarizing figure.

Blankenship calls himself a West Virginian but had his supervised release transferred last August to federal officials in Nevada, where he has a six-bedroom home with his fiancee 20 miles from Las Vegas, in Henderson.

“It’s a friendly place and I like it,” said Blankenship, whose supervised release ends May 9, the day after the primary.

Blankenship recently drew attention for comments on a radio show about the father of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Blankenship said he believed McConnell has a conflict of interest in foreign relations matters, in particular those dealing with China. Chao’s father was born in China and started an international shipping company in New York.

According to media reports, Blankenship’s fiancee also was born in China.

“I don’t have any problem with Chinese people, Chinese girlfriend, Chinese anything,” Blankenship told the radio station. “But I have an issue when the father-in-law is a wealthy Chinaperson and has a lot of connections with some of the brass, if you will, in China.”

Stanley Stewart, a retired miner who was inside the Upper Big Branch mine when it blew up in 2010, calls Blankenship ‘ruthless, cold-blooded, cold-hearted, self-centered.”

“I feel that if anybody voted for Don Blankenship, they may as well stick a knife in their back and twist it, because that’s exactly what he’ll do,” Stewart said in an interview.

But there is skepticism that Blankenship was treated fairly by the courts. Blankenship has cast himself as a victim of an overbearing Obama administration, an argument that resonates with many white working-class voters on the ground here. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court last October left in place his conviction when the justices declined to take up his case.

“What they’ve said he’s actually done (in the criminal case), I don’t believe none of that,” 21-year-old coal mechanic Zack Ball said while grabbing a bite to eat in the Boone County coal community of Danville. “Don Blankenship all the way.”

Inside a Whitesville pizza shop a few miles north of the shuttered Upper Big Branch mine, retiree Debbie Pauley said Blankenship “was railroaded” at his trial.

“I think that Blankenship does have integrity,” she said. “I don’t think he’d put up with any crap.”

U.S. Senate Candidate Out of Hospital After Mild Heart Attack

A Republican candidate in the U.S. Senate primary in West Virginia is out of the hospital after suffering a mild heart attack.

Weirton truck driver Jack Newbrough tells The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Registerthat doctors who performed a heart test found a 40 percent blockage and it’s being treated with medication. He says he’s under orders not to drive his truck for two weeks.

Newbrough says after attending campaign events Tuesday in Beckley and Huntington, the heart attack occurred early Wednesday when he awoke with chest pressure and discomfort but no pain. He drove himself to the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Huntington before undergoing a procedure at another hospital. He was released on Friday.

Newbrough and five other GOP candidates will square off in the May 8 primary.

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