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Crowded Field Seeks 3rd District House Seat in West Virginia

Rep. Evan Jenkins’ dream of a U.S. Senate seat has opened a door for other ambitious West Virginia politicians, prompting a rush of contenders for his congressional seat and giving Democrats their best chance for a pickup in the Mountain State.

Eleven candidates are on the ballot in Tuesday’s primaries for the 3rd Congressional District seat Jenkins is vacating, including six current or former state legislators.

Democrats controlled the seat for nearly 40 years under Nick Rahall, who was defeated by the Democrat-turned-Republican Jenkins in 2014. Now four Democrats want to turn that red seat blue, and seven Republicans want to keep it GOP.

West Virginia Wesleyan political history professor Robert Rupp said the 3rd District will be the Democrats’ best chance to pick up a U.S. House seat in West Virginia.

“We’re talking about an open seat now that Evan’s left,” Rupp said. “So that’s automatically attractive.”

The top fundraiser by far among Democrats in the race is state Sen. Richard Ojeda. Rupp calls him a “charismatic candidate” with a powerful story.

A retired Army major, Ojeda’s facial bones were broken when he was attacked at a Logan County political cookout days before the 2016 primary. Jonathan Porter of Holden, was sentenced to up to five years in prison after authorities said he hit Ojeda from behind with a pipe and brass knuckles, then tried to run him over with a pickup truck.

Ojeda defeated a Senate incumbent in that primary and won his seat that November.

This past January, Ojeda’s passionate Senate speech in favor of teachers foreshadowed the fight they would wage over pay and benefits. “When I said that a volcano was about to erupt, we are in that situation,” Ojeda told lawmakers.

West Virginia teachers ultimately won a 5 percent pay increase after a nine-day strike, and their success ignited similar teacher walkouts in other states.

“Ojeda not only made his opinion known, he made his presence known,” Rupp said. “Rather than just saying ‘I’m for the teachers,’ (he’s) there fighting for them.”

Other current state lawmakers in the 3rd District field are Democratic Delegate Shirley Love and Republican Delegates Marty Gearheart, Rupie Phillips and Carol Miller. Former Delegate Rick Snuffer is on the GOP ticket. Snuffer won the 2012 GOP 3rd District primary over two others before losing to Rahall in the general election.

Miller, a bison farmer, small business owner and daughter of the late Ohio Congressman Samuel Devine, raised the most money among the Republicans, doubling the hauls of Phillips and former state Republican Party Chairman Conrad Lucas.

Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats in every county in the 3rd District, which stretches from the Ohio River through the southern coalfields to the Greenbrier Valley. But when President Donald Trump overwhelmingly won West Virginia, he also won a majority of the vote all of these counties, some as high as 84 percent.

Rupp doesn’t see support for Trump or the GOP waning in West Virginia, but he sees an “era of uncertainty” among voters. Their misgivings about career politicians might mean voters are “ready to try something else, and that’s a national angst,” he said.

Congressmen David McKinley from the 1st District and Alex Mooney from the 2nd District are unopposed in the GOP primary.

The 1st District Democratic primary includes Keyser attorney Tom Payne, retired international law firm CEO Ralph Baxter of Wheeling and West Virginia University law professor Kendra Fershee. Federal Election Commission records show Baxter’s campaign has raised $623,000, 10 times more than Fershee. Payne has not submitted a finance report.

Mooney will face either Aaron Scheinberg of Hedgesville or former Hillary Clinton state presidential campaign director Talley Sergent of Charleston in the general election. Scheinberg’s campaign raised $534,000 through mid-April, compared to $256,000 for Sergent.

Senate Leader Gets No Support from 3 Warring GOP Candidates

Three Republican Senate candidates took turns going after one another in a nationally televised debate, with Rep. Evan Jenkins accusing state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey of bringing “New Jersey values” to West Virginia, and Morrisey deriding Jenkins’ past as a Democrat.

And neither Jenkins, Morrisey nor former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship expressed support for the Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

A week before the state’s primary election, the three candidates took part in one of the most contentious debates among several held recently across the state.

Morrisey accused Jenkins of having a liberal background and said his past stint as a Democrat should make voters wary. After switching to the Republican Party, Jenkins defeated 19-term Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall in 2014.

Jenkins pointed out this is not Morrisey’s first attempt at running for Congress, noting a failed 2000 attempt in his native New Jersey and a Morrisey campaign advertisement saying he’d fight anyone who goes against New Jersey values.

“You know what? We need somebody representing our values,” Jenkins said. “People need to be coming to West Virginia for the right reasons.”

Morrisey replied, “West Virginians wants someone with conservative values.”

Quizzed about his home near Las Vegas, Blankenship said he probably pays “more taxes than anybody on this stage to West Virginia.”

Blankenship served a year in federal prison for a misdemeanor conviction related to the 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine that killed 29 men in southern West Virginia.

When asked about Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference, Blankenship, who has maintained his own innocence, provoked the loudest laugh of the night.

“You know, I’ve had a little personal experience with the Department of Justice,” he said. “They lie a lot, too.”

Three other trailing GOP candidates weren’t invited to Tuesday’s debate on Fox News.

When asked whether they would support McConnell as Senate majority leader, none of the candidates raised their hands — Blankenship ducked behind the podium.

Blankenship is at odds with McConnell, who he says is “spending millions to defeat me.” Earlier Tuesday, Blankenship’s campaign released a statement attacking McConnell.

The statement referred to a 2014 magazine article alleging that drugs were found aboard a commercial cargo ship owned by the family of McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. The statement referred to McConnell as “Cocaine Mitch,” though the allegation didn’t directly involve the senator.

McConnell’s office referred questions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Calls to the NRSC went unanswered Tuesday night.

National GOP forces are believed to be behind the Mountain Families PAC, an organization created in March that has invested more than $700,000 attacking Blankenship on television. A spokesman for the Senate GOP’s most powerful super PAC has declined to confirm or deny a connection to the group.

Wesleyan Students Try To Predict W.Va. Primary

The upcoming senate race in West Virginia has drawn a big crowd of Republican contenders who are vying to face off on May 8 in the primary races. They’re competing for the Senate seat currently held by Joe Manchin, the long standing Democratic incumbent. A group of college students in a political science course at West Virginia Wesleyan College recently made their predictions for which Republicans they think will come out ahead in the primary senate race.

“We think it’s gonna be a really close race, mostly between Jenkins and Morrisey,” said 21-year-old Fairmont native, Hannah McCoy. She worked with a team of fellow students to research the senate race. Their final assignment is to predict which candidates will come out ahead.

“The polls aren’t very consistent right now. But what is consistent is there’s a lot of undecided voters. There’s at least 20 percent undecided voters in all five polls that we looked at.”

The paper McCoy and her classmates wrote is for a political science class, taught by political analyst Robert Rupp. They explored voting habits of West Virginians, and how social issues affect politics in the state.

Baltimore-native Katie Kennedy observed how politics in West Virginia play out very differently than what she’s seen in Maryland.

“We learned about the idea of personalism,” Kennedy said, “and how West Virginians don’t really rely on your credentials or your background in politics. They rely on the word of one another.”

“Family is another value that we looked at in West Virginia, and Jenkins highlights his wife and kids in all of his ads,” she added.

The students also considered how current events might affect voters this year.

“It’s really gonna come down to West Virginia values, the drug epidemic, and the West Virginia teachers’ strike, where Morrisey said that he would help to arrest the teachers and Jenkins publicly supported them. We think that will be a game changer between the two,” said McCoy.

This first group of students, made up entirely of young women, predicts that Jenkins will come out first, Morrisey second. The second group, comprised solely of young men, predicts that Don Blankenship will actually come in ahead of Morrisey.

“He flooded a lot of money into his campaign. He has a good campaign manager that’s well received in the state of West Virginia,” said Tyler Broadwater, one of the students in the all-male group. “And he has a lot of his own financial resources to put into the campaign.”

Broadwater’s team agree with the first group that Jenkins will likely win the primary. But they think Blankenship has gained a good bit of ground in the last few weeks.

“Initially we started out looking at different polls. And we initially found out that there weren’t a lot of polls that were done. And then, there were even fewer polls that were being done by nonpartisan groups. For example, we saw some polls that showed Jenkins highly favored, early on. But the polls that had Jenkins significantly ahead, we did a little bit of research and found that the polls that were being done were sponsored by Jenkins’ backers.”

This group also looked at how the Teachers’ Strike might influence this race, said Lawrence Rebelo. “Because even though they were supporting the Democratic party, this is still Trump Country. So they may vote for some Dems, but when it comes down to it, I think they’ll vote for Jenkins. Maybe, half of them, at least.”

Rebelo, who grew up in Preston County, admits that he’s a strong Democrat. But he was surprised to learn some things about the Republican candidates, including that Jenkins publicly supported the teachers.

His classmate, Broadwater, said the project has made him realize how important it is to do research before deciding how to cast your vote.

“I think this class has taught us a little bit about, not being skeptical, but understanding where the information’s coming from. And especially who pays for that information.”

GOP Legislators Looking for a Winning Formula in 2018

Congressional Republicans have gathered at a West Virginia resort in search of a winning election-year agenda. The best they have to offer in 2018 may be a recitation of the tax cuts approved in 2017 — and the threat of another government shutdown is looming.

The legislators had forums on topics such as infrastructure, national security and the economy — but noticeably not on immigration, the major issue that bedevils them.

They got a pep talk from President Donald Trump reliving passage of the tax bill and highlighting other GOP victories from his first year in office. But the president offered no clear strategy for resolving the immigration-and-spending standoff that produced a three-day government shutdown in January and threatens a second shutdown next week. And he offered no new policy details on infrastructure, prescription drug prices or other items he’s mentioned as ripe for attention in 2018.

As for an immigration strategy, Trump said: “We have to get help from the other side, or we have to elect many more Republicans.” He then proceeded to take jabs at Democrats just days after calling for bipartisan unity in his State of the Union address.

Trump took a similar tack at a second GOP event Thursday night in Washington.

“You know the Democrats are AWOL. They’re missing in action,” Trump said at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting at his Washington hotel. “We’re saying, ‘Where are they?’ We have a proposal. We never hear from them.”

Republicans appear headed into the year with the idea that 2017 was when they got bigger items done and that 2018 will be a time to deal with necessary business, including spending and immigration. Infrastructure would likely require a sustained push from the president. The message for the midterms is expected to be the economy and tax cuts.

“Tax reform is working,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, citing investments by UPS and employee bonuses by Lowe’s as the latest evidence. Take-home pay is going up, while consumer confidence is at a 17-year high and unemployment at a 17-year low, Ryan said.

Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, gamely told reporters that Trump’s history as a developer makes him the ideal person to push a major infrastructure plan.

Shuster said public-private partnerships such as those used by Connecticut at highway rest stops could be an alternative. Raising the gas tax, a reliable source of funding for highways, is a tough sell with this Congress.

Trump mentioned a “right to try” bill to speed approval of life-saving drugs, but the plan received little or no buzz among lawmakers.

Besides tax cuts and the strong economy, Republicans said they have a not-so-secret weapon: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who said the GOP tax bill would provide mere “crumbs” for many taxpayers.

Trump compared the remark to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 description of his supporters as “deplorables,” and Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, chairman of the House campaign arm, said Pelosi’s words will be repeated in TV ads around the country.

“Her ‘crumbs’ comment is something I think we can use pretty effectively,” Stivers said.

Amid the optimism were nagging questions about whether lawmakers will enact immigration changes or deadlock over Trump’s calls for a wall along the Mexican border and a path to citizenship for young immigrants here illegally. Meanwhile Congress faces a Feb. 8 deadline to avert another government shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised that wouldn’t happen, saying, “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.”

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he doubted there will be a unified Republican approach on immigration, noting that House and Senate Republicans have vastly different visions on the bill. And while there was no formal immigration session on the agenda, Lankford and other lawmakers said the issue has come up frequently in informal talks among lawmakers.

“There’s a lot of dialogue happening in the hallway” on immigration, Lankford said, adding that he hopes the GOP will coalesce around a White House framework Trump outlined last week and reiterated during his State of the Union address.

The White House has proposed creating a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young people living in the county illegally in exchange for billions for a border wall and dramatic cuts to legal immigration. Democrats have blasted the plan and called it dead on arrival.

Trump claimed that if Democrats don’t agree to the immigration framework he’s presented, it will be because they want the issue to animate voters in the 2018 midterm elections.

“It’s now an election issue that will go to our benefit, not their benefit,” he said.

In Washington later, he said: “I don’t think they want to solve the DACA problem. I think they want to talk about it. I think they want to obstruct. … That’s all they do is resist.”

The Latest: Rail Crossing at Crash Site Has Warning Signals

This is a developing story. Keep checking back for more details.

Updated at 4:02 p.m.

The railroad crossing where a train carrying Republican lawmakers struck a trash truck is equipped with two advance warning signs, two roadway gate arms, two mast-mounted flashing lights and a bell to warn of an approaching train.

Those details are included in a U.S. Department of Transportation Inventory Form dated Jan. 3 describing the warning system at the crossing near Crozet, Virginia.

According to the report, three freight trains pass through the intersection during the day and two at night, on average. The report says passenger trains don’t go through very often — an average of less than one per day.

The maximum speed for trains crossing the intersection is 60 miles per hour.

One accident report filed by CSX Transportation in 1999 said a train hit a vehicle that was stuck between the rails at the crossing. No injuries were reported, but there was damage to the train’s engine and the vehicle, which was driven by a 70-year-old woman who got out of her car before the train hit.

Updated at 3:15 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he has spoken to House Speaker Paul Ryan after a train carrying Republican lawmakers to a retreat hit a truck on the tracks in Virginia.

The president says in the Oval Office that the lawmakers are “doing pretty good” and are “proceeding with their conference.” Trump says he was told “it was a pretty rough hit.”

The White House says one person was killed and another was seriously injured after the chartered train struck a garbage truck.

Trump is planning to address the Republican lawmakers Thursday at the conference at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

___

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee was injured Wednesday morning when a train taking Republican members of Congress to a retreat hit a garbage truck in Virginia.

The Republican said in a phone call from the scene, where he was being treated for his injuries, that he was on his way to the restroom when the crash occurred. He said he was thrown around upon impact and suffered neck, back and foot injuries.

Fleischmann said he was in a “bit of shock” and significant pain.

Updated at 2:30 p.m.

Staff members say Rep. Jason Lewis of Minnesota has been taken to a hospital after being injured in a train accident in Virginia.

Members of his staff tweeted that the first-term congressman was being checked for a possible concussion after the Wednesday crash.

Officials say the train was carrying Republican lawmakers from Washington to a retreat in West Virginia when it hit a truck on the tracks near Crozet, Virginia.

The White House is confirming one fatality and one serious injury after the chartered train hit a garbage truck.

Updated at 2:15 p.m.

A spokeswoman says Rep. Jason Lewis of Minnesota has been taken to a hospital after being injured in a train accident in Virginia.

Campaign manager Becky Alery says the first-term congressman has suffered possible whiplash in the Wednesday crash and the hospital visit is standard protocol.

Officials say the train was carrying Republican lawmakers from Washington to a retreat in West Virginia when it hit a truck on the tracks near Crozet, Virginia.

The White House is confirming one fatality and one serious injury after the chartered train hit a garbage truck.

Updated at 2 p.m.

Amtrak says two crew members and two passengers have been taken to a hospital with minor injuries after a train crash in Virginia.

Amtrak spokeswoman Beth K. Toll says the four were injured when the train hit a truck on the tracks Wednesday morning near Crozet, Virginia.

Police and a local hospital have given differing figures, but the reason for the discrepancies wasn’t immediately clear.

The train was carrying Republican lawmakers to a conference at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

The accident happened at an intersection that crosses the tracks at the top of a hill where visibility is limited. There is a train arm at the crossing.

Crozet is a small town west of Charlottesville, which is home to the University of Virginia.

Updated at 1:55 p.m.

The organization that’s hosting a retreat for congressional Republicans says the event will go on with an adjusted program in the wake of the train accident carrying participants to a West Virginia resort.

The Congressional Institute says the decision was made after consulting with Republican leaders.

The White House is confirming one fatality and one serious injury after the chartered train hit a garbage truck.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says there are no serious injuries among members of Congress or congressional staff.

Updated at 1:15 p.m.

A congressman on the train involved in an accident on its way to a GOP retreat in West Virginia says three lawmakers who are doctors tended to crash victims.

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky says the collision destroyed a garbage truck, leaving it “just in pieces.”

Comer says Reps. Larry Bucshon of Indiana, Roger Marshall of Kansas and Brad Wenstrup of Ohio came to the aid of crash victims before emergency personnel — including a transport helicopter — arrived.

The train was en route to a conference at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and hit the truck in Crozet, Virginia — which is near west of Charlottesville.

Comer says lawmakers, spouses, and aides had been on the train for about two hours when suddenly there was a crash. The impact made him jump out of his seat.

Updated at 12:40 p.m.

An Amtrak spokeswoman says a train has come into contact with a vehicle on the tracks in central Virginia — the same area where members of Congress are reporting their train struck a truck.

Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods says there are no reported injuries to passengers or crew members after the incident that happened around 11:20 a.m. in Crozet, Virginia. Crozet is about 15 miles west of Charlottesville.

Woods says the train originated in Washington, but she couldn’t confirm that members of Congress were aboard.

She says local law enforcement is investigating and crews are inspecting equipment for damage.

Updated at 12:35 p.m.

The White House is confirming one fatality and one serious injury after a chartered train carrying Republican lawmakers to a retreat in West Virginia hit a garbage truck.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says there are no serious injuries among members of Congress or congressional staff.

Sanders says President Donald Trump has been fully briefed on the matter and is receiving regular updates.

The train carrying the lawmakers hit a garbage truck south of Charlottesville, Virginia.

Lawmakers are heading to their annual legislative retreat at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.

Original Post:

Republican lawmakers and aides say a train carrying them to a policy retreat in West Virginia has struck a truck.

Oklahoma GOP Rep. Tom Cole says a person on the truck may have been injured. Emergency workers were on the scene.

Cole says he’s not aware of any injuries on the train. A GOP aide speaking on condition of anonymity because the aide was not authorized to speak publicly says no lawmakers were injured.

Cole says he believes the accident occurred near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Melody Potter to Lead West Virginia's Republican Party

Melody Potter has been selected as the first woman to lead West Virginia’s Republican Party.

The state GOP says in a news release that Potter was elected party chairwoman Saturday by members of the state Republican Executive Committee at their winter meeting.

She replaces Conrad Lucas, who plans to seek the GOP nomination for a U.S. House seat in the state’s 3rd District.

Melody previously represented the state on the Republican National Committee.

The South Charleston resident is a small business owner and vice president of Tri-Star Coal Sales.