Democrat Manchin to Skip Governor’s Race, Stay in Senate

(Bloomberg) -- Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Tuesday he’ll remain in the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor, saving his party from having to defend a seat next year in a heavily Republican state.

Manchin’s decision will be good news to Democratic Party leaders, who already face long odds of gaining a Senate majority in the 2020 elections. Republicans now hold a 53-47 advantage.

It also avoids a hotly contested race with Republican Governor Jim Justice, a former Democrat who in 2017 announced at a rally with President Donald Trump that he was switching his party affiliation to Republican. Manchin won’t face voters again until 2024, rather than next year when the White House, U.S. Senate and U.S. House all will be up for grabs.

Manchin told reporters that he made his decision on Monday. He said remaining in the Senate lets him keep his position as the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which enables him to protect his home state’s coal industry while also nudging it toward a leading role in cleaner-burning technologies. He also said he wants to preserve West Virginia’s status as one of the few states with two senators on the powerful Appropriations panel.

“We’re able to get something accomplished,” Manchin said, adding that he has a strong relationship with state’s other senator, Republican Shelley Moore Capito.

A former two-term governor, Manchin has built his own political brand even as the state has turned solidly Republican. Manchin last year narrowly won a second Senate term, even though Trump won the state by 42 percentage points in 2016 and campaigned heavily for Manchin’s GOP challenger.

In his 2018 campaign, Manchin drew on his longstanding ties in the state and his record of bipartisanship, including voting for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He also highlighted his support for Obamacare and its protections for people with pre-existing health conditions and defended himself against GOP attacks for his vote against the 2017 GOP tax cuts.

Manchin voted with Trump more than 61% of the time in the last two-year session of Congress, more than any other Democrat, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.com.

To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Litvan in Washington at llitvan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo

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