CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The polls have closed in West Virginia where Republican voters on Tuesday were deciding the fate of Don Blankenship, a brash GOP outsider with who embraced Donald Trump’s political playbook — but was opposed by the president — in an election that could play prominently in the fight for the Senate majority this fall.
Trump and his allies in Washington warned West Virginia Republicans against supporting Blankenship, who served a year in prison for his role in a deadly mine disaster and more recently attacked the Asian heritage of the top Senate Republican’s wife. The White House worried that Blankenship’s baggage would make it all but impossible to defeat vulnerable Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in November.
Yet it was unclear as polls closed whether voters heeded that warning, even in the state where Trump claimed his largest margin of victory in 2016.
West Virginia voter Wayne Sturgeon, who voted Tuesday for Blankenship, said he’s a Trump supporter but was bothered by the White House intrusion.
“I think it should be left up to the people,” Sturgeon said.
The West Virginia Republican Senate contest headlined a slate of primary elections across four states on Tuesday that will help shape the political landscape in this fall’s midterm elections. Control of Congress is at stake in addition to state governments across the nation.
In most cases, the Republican candidates on the ballot Tuesday have competed to be seen as the most conservative, the most anti-Washington and the most loyal to the Republican president.
Yet none of Tuesday’s other contests was expected to have more impact on the midterm landscape than West Virginia, where Blankenship embraced Trump’s tactics — casting himself as a victim of government persecution and seizing on xenophobia, if not racism — to stand out in a crowded Republican field that includes state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Republican Congressman Evan Jenkins.
The state’s Republican electorate is overwhelmingly white, working class and rural, in contrast to other states that feature more suburban voters. Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 42 points here less than two years ago, but there are far more Democrats than Republicans registered to vote.
The stakes are high for a Republican Party bracing for major losses in this fall’s midterm elections. A victory on Tuesday for Blankenship could make it hard for Republicans to gain a Senate seat in this deep-red state in November. But the anti-establishment fervor unleashed by Trump’s 2016 campaign has proved difficult for GOP leaders to rein in.
West Virginia Republican Chairwoman Melody Potter downplayed concerns about Blankenship, pointing to another Republican outsider who ultimately proved the establishment wrong. “You know, when Trump was running, some of those same people said that, too,” Potter said.
Trump and his party leaders have been more united against Blankenship in recent weeks. The head of the Senate Republican campaign arm has highlighted Blankenship’s criminal history. And a group allied with the national GOP, known as Mountain Families PAC, has spent more than $1.2 million in attack ads against Blankenship.
The retired businessman was released less than a year ago from a prison term for a 2010 mine explosion that left 29 men dead. Blankenship led the company that owned the mine and was sentenced to a year in prison for conspiring to break safety laws, a misdemeanor.
He has repeatedly blamed government regulators for the disaster, casting himself as the victim of an overzealous Obama-era Justice Department — an argument Trump regularly uses to dismiss federal agents investigating his campaign’s ties to Russia.
The Senate candidate took aim at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in an ad claiming that McConnell has created jobs for “China people” and that his “China family” has given him millions of dollars. McConnell’s wife is U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, born in Taiwan.
Even as Blankenship rebuffed Trump’s criticism this week, he described himself as “Trumpier than Trump” and played up his outsider credentials.