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Manchin Won’t Run for West Virginia Governor; Will Stay in Senate Manchin Won’t Run for West Virginia Governor; Will Stay in Senate
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III announced Tuesday that he will not run for governor in his home state of West Virginia, ending speculation about the future of one of the Senate’s few moderate Democrats. WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III announced on Tuesday that he would not run for governor in his home state of West Virginia, ending speculation about the future of one of the Senate’s few moderate Democrats — and bringing relief to party leaders who feared Republicans would win his seat if he stepped down.
“Those who know me know how much I loved being the governor of West Virginia,” Mr. Manchin said in a statement. “I worked the daylights out of that job. I couldn’t wait to wake up in the Governor’s Mansion in the morning, and I didn’t want to go to bed at night, because there was always more that I could do for our state.” “Those who know me know how much I loved being the governor of West Virginia,” Mr. Manchin, who served in that role from 2005 to 2010, said in a statement. “I worked the daylights out of that job. I couldn’t wait to wake up in the Governor’s Mansion in the morning, and I didn’t want to go to bed at night, because there was always more that I could do for our state.”
But he said he could not make a decision based on what job he liked most, but rather on where he could be most useful. “Ultimately, I believe my role as U.S. senator allows me to position our state for success for the rest of this century,” he said, by working on issues like jobs, energy and the environment. But he said he could not make a decision based on what job he liked most, but rather on where he could be most useful.
Mr. Manchin, who served as governor from 2005 to 2010, has made no secret of his dislike for the Senate. At the outset of 2018, he was flirting with retirement, and had repeatedly expressed his frustration to Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, telling him at one point, “this place sucks.” He has long said he preferred being governor. “Ultimately, I believe my role as U.S. senator allows me to position our state for success for the rest of this century,” he said, by working on issues like jobs, energy, health care and the environment. Mr. Manchin serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Mr. Manchin has also been extremely critical of Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, a Trump-like Republican who ran as a Democrat but later switched parties at Mr. Trump’s urging. Last year, Mr. Justice fired Mr. Manchin’s wife, Gayle, from her position as West Virginia Secretary for Education and the Arts. Mr. Manchin’s decision was good news for Democrats, who are trying to win control of the Senate in 2020. Still, most analysts say that is a long shot, even with Mr. Manchin’s decision to stay.
The decision announced Tuesday was so last minute that Mr. Manchin’s communications director, Jonathan Kott, said he wrote up two statements — and so secretive that Mr. Kott did not know before the announcement which one Mr. Manchin would use. The Senate math is more favorable for Democrats in 2020 than it was in 2018, when Mr. Manchin squeaked to re-election by 3 percentage points in a state President Trump won by more than 40 points. Even so, Democrats must pick up four seats to gain a majority if Mr. Trump wins re-election, and three seats if a Democrat wins the White House.
Mr. Manchin is a rare breed in the Senate: a moderate Democrat, the only one outside of Senator Doug Jones of Alabama. When he won re-election in 2018, he was the sole survivor of a trio of incumbent moderates who were running that year. Two others — Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — lost their races. “They need a wave,” said Charlie Cook, the editor of The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter that tracks congressional races.
Mr. Manchin’s decision to stay in the Senate could be a reflection of the shifting politics both in West Virginia, where he might have difficulty notching victories with a Republican Legislature, and in Washington, where he may be calculating that he could play an outsize role in a highly divided Senate — or even become the crucial vote if the chamber is split 50 to 50.
Mr. Manchin is a member of a vanishing breed in the Senate. Among Democrats, he is the only moderate outside Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, who won his seat in a special election in 2017 against a deeply flawed Republican: Roy S. Moore, a former judge who was accused of sexually molesting a teenage girl when he was in his 30s. Mr. Jones must now seek the seat in his own right, and is considered highly vulnerable.
Two other moderate Democrats — Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — lost their races for re-election in 2018.
In the Senate, Mr. Manchin is already a key swing vote. He was the lone Democrat to vote in favor of the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last year. According to the website FiveThirtyEight, which tracks lawmakers’ votes, Mr. Manchin has voted with Mr. Trump 54 percent of the time.
His signature initiative is a bill to expand background checks for nearly all gun purchases — the so-called Manchin-Toomey legislation, named for him and Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania. The measure fell to a filibuster in 2013, but a recent spate of mass shootings has revived talk of it, and Mr. Manchin and Mr. Toomey have been in negotiations with the White House in an effort to get the president on board with the legislation, or some version of it.
Yet Mr. Manchin has made no secret of his dislike for the Senate. At the beginning of 2018, he was flirting with retirement, and had repeatedly expressed his frustration to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, telling him at one point that “this place sucks.” He has long said he preferred being governor.
Mr. Manchin has also been extremely critical of West Virginia’s governor, Jim Justice, a Trump-like Republican who ran as a Democrat but later switched parties at Mr. Trump’s urging. Last year, Mr. Justice fired Mr. Manchin’s wife, Gayle, from her position as West Virginia’s secretary of education and the arts.
At a news conference in Charleston on Tuesday afternoon, hours after he made his announcement, Mr. Manchin said he had reached the decision on Monday, and was at peace with it.
He also spoke of his role in Washington.
“There’s nobody trying to find the middle; everybody’s going down the sides,” Mr. Manchin said, adding, “I think it’s extremely important for me to be able to speak truth to power.”