The heaviest of low-hanging fruit for Republicans seeking to flip control of the U.S. Senate in 2024 is Joe Manchin’s seat in West Virginia, a state that has trended massively toward the GOP as the moderate-to-conservative Democrat has held on by his fingernails. Manchin hasn’t announced another Senate bid, but if he does, the road to reelection just got steeper. Senate Republicans have gotten their prize recruit for the race against Manchin; popular two-term governor Jim Justice is announcing his candidacy on Thursday at the Greenbrier resort his very wealthy family owns. He’ll be accompanied by his pet and mascot, an English bulldog named Babydog, who has become a regular prop in all of the governor’s big moments (during his televised 2022 State of the State Address, he held up the dog’s rear end and told his and his state’s detractors they could “kiss Babydog’s heinie”).
High jinks aside, Justice is a shrewd politician who definitely has some history with Manchin. The senator reportedly talked the crazy-rich coal operator Justice into running for governor in 2016 as a Democrat, continuing a tradition of right-leaning Democratic governors that included Manchin himself. But soon after he won the office, Justice switched parties at a Donald Trump rally in West Virginia, and later added insult to injury by firing Manchin’s wife Gayle, who was in the appointed office of secretary of Education and Arts.
At the moment, Justice is a lot more popular in West Virginia than the Democratic incumbent. Indeed, a recent battery of Morning Consult polls showed Justice (with an overall job-approval ratio of 66-31) as more popular than Manchin (who is underwater among all voters at 38-55) among Democrats in the state. Justice can also self-fund a campaign to an almost limitless degree.
Right now, Manchin’s best hope for survival if he does run for reelection is that Justice will be taken down or severely damaged by primary opponent Alex Mooney, a five-term U.S. House member. Mooney is best known for wielding a Donald Trump endorsement to survive a 2022 primary against House colleague David McKinley after West Virginia lost a House district in reapportionment. Now Mooney is being backed by the Club for Growth, which is sure to go after Justice as an ex-Democratic RINO. In some ways, the Senate primary may become a surrogate battle between the Club and Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund, which will back Justice to the hilt as the more likely Manchin-slayer. Mooney is also praying for another Trump endorsement, but since the former president also has ties to Justice, that seems unlikely at a time when Trump is focused on his own campaign.
If, as the betting odds would indicate, Justice and Manchin do face off in a general-election grudge match (in the shadow of a presidential election in which Republicans are sure to carry West Virginia by 30 to 40 points), it will represent another sign of the gerontocracy ruling the Senate in particular and U.S. politics generally. Justice has chosen to announce his Senate candidacy on his 73rd birthday. Manchin is currently 75 (for what it’s worth, Mooney is a relatively youthful 51). But the state is used to being represented by old folks: Manchin’s Senate predecessor was Robert Byrd, who died in office at the age of 92; Byrd’s longtime Senate colleague Jennings Randolph retired at the age of 82. Babydog Justice, on the other hand, is only three years old.
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