Joe Manchin Is About to Face His Most Potent Challenge

Jim Justice, the Democrat-turned-Republican governor of West Virginia, is scheduled to make an announcement regarding his political future on April 27. He is term-limited and cannot run for re-election in 2024. As it turns out, there’s another opportunity on offer in his state at that time. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) will be up for re-election, assuming he runs for a third term in the Senate, which is by no means certain. The Democrat has remained somewhat non-committal on the subject. If Manchin does plan to stay in Congress, though, Justice appears to be the one Republican who has a real shot at denying him.

While he is widely considered to be one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the upper chamber, the GOP has yet to find the man or woman who can unseat Joe Manchin. In 2018, he fended off a challenge from state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) by a little more than just three percentage points. Still, a win is a win. The senator is now into his 13th year in Congress, where he has become a thorn in the side of Joe Biden and his party colleagues who need every vote to thwart the Republicans over whom they hold the thinnest of numerical advantages.

The Man Who Can Beat Joe Manchin, Perhaps?

The Republican-affiliated Senate Leadership Fund commissioned The Tarrance Group to conduct a poll of West Virginia voters and the results were published on February 8. The survey matched Joe Manchin with three likely GOP challengers; Morrisey, Justice, and WV Rep. Alex Mooney. Though the Democrat came out ahead of both Mooney and Morrisey, by 15 points and 10 points, respectively, he trailed Justice by 42% - 52%. Since then, Morrisey has announced that he will run to replace the outgoing Justice as governor.

Justice’s announcement is expected to set up a tough Republican primary between himself and Mooney, who is backed by the pro-free-market Club for Growth. Obviously, since he is a former Democrat, Justice doesn’t have the conservative credentials Mooney boasts. Perhaps, though, that is what voters in his state may be looking for if they choose to replace a moderate Democrat. The February poll seems to hint at this.

Mooney, a five-term congressman, defeated fellow incumbent Republican David McKinley in a 2022 primary for West Virginia’s redrawn 2nd District. He is an avid Trump supporter and received the former president’s endorsement. Justice also has a Trump connection. It was from the stage of a 2017 Trump rally in the Mountain State that he announced he would be switching his party registration to Republican.

A common refrain, these days, is that this or that electoral contest could determine future control of the Senate or of the House – or even the future of the United States. There are a lot of moving parts, though, and 2024 is a long way off, if one remembers the words of the late Harold Wilson, the Labor Party Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from the 1960s and 1970s. He famously said: “A week is a long time in politics.” Should he choose to run for another term, Joe Manchin will have a fight on his hands, but who knows if his battle will decide the Senate majority? Still, the Republicans will surely have missed the mark if they cannot pick off this seat – and they may be hoping that Jim Justice is the guy who can get it done.