The polls are looking rough for five-term Representative Alex Mooney (R., W.Va.) ahead of today’s Republican Senate primary in West Virginia.
The longtime House Freedom Caucus member who spent the entire Senate primary race calling Governor Jim Justice a “liberal” is still trailing him by double digits in the GOP primary race for the seat of retiring Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. The state is now seen as a lock for Senate Republicans in November given its deep-red tilt. (Donald Trump, who endorsed Justice, carried the state by nearly 40 points in 2020.)
As NR reported earlier this year, Washington Republicans — including the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Mitch McConnell–aligned Senate Leadership Fund — made an early bet that endorsing deep-pocketed and well-known Governor Justice in the primary would scare Manchin into retirement. Here’s Mooney speaking about this political dynamic in a recent interview with National Review:
“In their mind, they didn’t want to spend a bunch of money to beat him in a general election. So they got Jim Justice to run. . . . So, it’s not intended to be personal to me. Of course, everything is personal to me because I’m a candidate” . . .
“They were right about that, I’ll give them that: Justice running got Joe Manchin to retire. Although personally, I think Joe Manchin was going to retire anyway,” Mooney said of the outgoing senator, citing Manchin’s decision to vote to convict Trump during both of the former president’s impeachment trials as a nonstarter for West Virginians in a general election.
Yet this admission also came with a warning: Justice will “sell them out” if he makes it to Washington. Speaking with NR, Mooney pointed to his opponent’s support for Biden’s “so-called Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022 and pandemic-era “shutdowns” as proof that the governor — who switched party affiliations in 2017 — will side with Democrats when it counts. More from that interview here:
Asked to recall his initial reaction to the NRSC’s decision to back Justice last year, the word “disappointment” came to mind. “I’ve been a good, loyal Republican for ten years in the House, I pay NRCC dues, I vote for the Republican for speaker. I’ve always been a good conservative Republican,” Mooney says.
Read Burgess Everett’s recent piece in Politico about why the Club for Growth reneged on its $10 million commitment to Mooney in the primary, and how in-cycle Senator Ted Cruz (R., Tex.) has used Mooney’s candidacy as “a way to push the entire party rightward — and make life more of a nightmare for party leaders.”