West Virginia

The Senate races that could shock you on election night.

Quality candidates made it through the Republican primaries this time.

Both Republicans and Democrats avoided elevating bad candidates in marquee races.

A sober, quantitative analysis of a completely bonkers primary.

Hosted by Charlie Sykes.

Republicans are panicking as internal polls show Don Blankenship, a coal baron who spent time in jail for a mining disaster that killed 29 workers, surging into the lead in the West Virginia Senate GOP primary over Attorney General Patrick Morrissey and Congressman Evan Jenkins.

Get ready for West Virginia's Republican primary

A Democratic super PAC is boosting its spending against Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-W.V., in an effort to prop up Don Blankenship's campaign for the GOP nomination to take on Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren and deputy online editor Jim Swift join host Charlie Sykes to discuss whether or not Dr. Ronny Jackson, President Trump's pick to lead the VA stands a shot at getting confirmed by the Senate, Mick Mulvaney's views on lobbyist…

Can West Virginia Republicans take down Joe Manchin?

Election wonks don’t play favorites with polls. We love them all equally. (Translation: We do our best to judge them impartially based on their past accuracy, methodology, question wording, context and other relevant factors.) But it’s hard not to have a soft spot for surveys that offer something…

West Virginia’s Democratic governor Jim Justice is expected to announce he is changing parties at a rally Thursday night with President Donald Trump, after Trump promised earlier in the day “a very big announcement” was to come during the event. The New York Times was first to report the news.

This is not another glowing review of the universally-praised Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance's first-hand account of the problems facing the white working-class in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. Not because I don't like the memoir—along with apparently everyone else who has read it, I found the memoir…

Hillary Clinton was met by dozens of enraged protesters and a middle finger or two during a campaign stop in Williamson, West Virginia, earlier this week.

Shelley Moore Capito is projected to win the Senate race in West Virginia. This marks the first Republican Senate pick-up of the 2014 election.

Entering the final fortnight of the Senate races, something of a pattern has started to develop. Republicans are leading in the Real Clear Politics average of recent polling in all states that were to the right of the national average in the 2012 election (which President Obama won by 4 points),…

Republican Shelley Moore Capito leads her Democratic opponent Natalie Tennant by 17 points, according to a new poll of the West Virginia Senate race from Rasmussen Reports. An even 50 percent say they support Capito, the congresswoman and daughter of former governor Arch Moore, while just 33…

Republicans have distinct advantages in Senate races this year, including President Obama’s low job ratings, the number of vulnerable Democrats, and an unhappy national mood. But there’s another advantage: the generally high quality of their candidates. This wasn’t the case in 2010 and 2012, when…

The next senator from West Virginia will be a woman, a first for the state. Republican congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and Democratic secretary of state Natalie Tennant are projected to win their parties' respective primaries.

Ravenswood, W.Va.

What do Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia have in common? For one, none has a city larger than 400,000 people. For another, they all voted for John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. For yet another, they are the most likely places for Republicans to pick up…

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin broke with his party's leader in the Senate by refusing to attack a pair of wealthy billionaire brothers who donate to free-market causes. Asked about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's frequent attacks on Charles and David Koch, Manchin told Brian Kilmeade of…

Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he has "serious questions" about Chuck Hagel, who has been nominated as secretary of defense:

Republican House member Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia will challenge Democrat Jay Rockefeller for the U.S. Senate. At 59, Capito, who has served in the House of Representatives since 2001 and is the daughter of former West Virginia governor Arch Moore, will be facing a 75-year-old…

The AP reports:

Romney, W.V. 

Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia refused to answer a question about his position on repealing part or all of Obamacare this afternoon outside the Senate chamber. Asked by THE WEEKLY STANDARD if he supported repealing any part of the 2010 health care law, Manchin then stepped into an…

Alex Pappas reports that West Virginia Democrats continue to distance themselves from President Barack Obama: 

More Democrats seem to be distancing themselves from President Obama. Politico finds this nugget from a debate between Democrat Ron Barber and his Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, in Arizona's Eighth Congressional District (Gabby Giffords's home district):

“We’ve had some small contributions, but the largest was, I think, maybe a hundred dollars,” says presidential candidate John Wolfe Jr., speaking to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “I’m basically paying for this myself, dipping into my retirement account.”

The federal prison inmate who got 41 percent of the Democratic primary vote in West Virginia last week against President Obama tells CNN that this election is about the economy:

Now that President Obama's reelection team wants to include coal on the agenda, it's worth remembering that Obama himself warned in 2008 that his policies would bankrupt anyone who started a coal power plant. Here he is in 2008, speaking with the San Francisco Chronicle:

After a disappointing showing in West Virginia, where President Obama received only 59 percent of the vote against a prison inmate in the Democratic primary, the president's reelection team decided to highlight the importance of coal (or clean coal, to be exact) on its website. (West Virginia is a…

Keith Judd, a federal inmate incarcerated in Texas, garnered 40 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary in West Virginia yesterday. The good showing by the convict is a bit of an embarrassment for Barack Obama, but the president's reelection campaign appears to be taking advantage of the…

President Barack Obama has won the Democratic party primary in West Virginia--but it was closer than expected. The president's only opponent in the race, Keith Judd, is an inmate at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas. Obama received 59.4 percent of the Democratic primary vote,…

President Barack Obama might not be the only Democratic presidential candidate to receive a national party delegate in West Virginia. Keith Judd might receive one, also. But, in order for him to be represented at the Democratic National Committee convention in North Carolina, he must win at least…

West Virginia's Democratic governor, Earl Ray Tomblin, is not sure who he will vote for in November.

Acting governor Earl Ray Tomblin has won Tuesday's special election for governor in West Virginia, according to the Associated Press. Tomblin, the Democratic state senate president since 1995, defeated Republican businessman and first-time candidate Bill Maloney.

Charleston, W. Va.

Jon Stewart skewers the Obama administration on Solyndra.

"Schumer: You’re damn right we’ll use Gingrich’s criticism of Ryan against the GOP"

It's only been a few weeks since Manchin last made a stink about Obama and his fellow Democrats' total lack of leadership. Well, Manchin's not done putting his party through the wringer yet:

West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin attended a $1,000 to $5,000 a head fundraiser in Washington, D.C. today and apparently* slipped out the back door without taking questions from the press.

Governor Joe Manchin, who trails Republican John Raese by 3 points in Rasmussen's latest poll on the West Virginia Senate race (the Real Clear Politics average has Manchin slightly ahead on the basis of two Democratic polls), is now running a pro-Obamacare ad:

1. Does Linda McMahon Stand a Chance in Connecticut?  Rasmussen and Quinnipiac both find the Republican nominee for Senate in Connecticut, Linda McMahon, well within striking distance of Democrat Richard Blumenthal.  Can she pull this off, or is this a dead cat bounce?