Charleston, West Virginia, is about 360 winding miles from Washington. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) visits the city often when in the state that he’s represented in the U.S. Senate for a dozen years.
Charleston is familiar, friendly turf. Raised in the Alleghenies near Pennsylvania, Mr. Manchin is a well-known face in the state’s capital, where he worked and lived as a state lawmaker, secretary of state, and governor for more than three decades.
During an Oct. 11–13 swing through Charleston, he was celebrated at an Amtrak station renovated with grants he secured; at a metal-stamping plant founded with economic development initiatives he enacted as governor; and at an annual veterans motorcycle fundraiser ride that he’s headlined for years.
Mr. Manchin’s local legacies are built into bolts and bricks, solid as steel, and part of the physical landscape. It’s the type of familiar, friendly turf where a 76-year-old veteran of a half-century of Hill-Topper and Capitol Hill politics could retire to—or launch an underdog presidential campaign from.
The odds of such an insurgency gaining steam, or even much notice, are incalculable in a changed political landscape that’s no longer the familiar, friendly domain he plied between party hedges for years.
Mr. Manchin’s middle road is now a barbed-wire ribbon on a divided highway.
Beyond Charleston, even within West Virginia, Mr. Manchin’s stature is as fuzzy as is his status as the Senate’s most “conservative” Democrat, a cross-aisle back-slapper whose deal-making days are numbered.
No Country for Old Centrists
The make-a-deal pliability that made Mr. Manchin a crafty centrist with de facto thumbs-up, thumbs-down veto power over both parties’ agendas for years—often cast after dramatic deliberative pauses and media speculation—fostered his outsized ascendancy in national affairs.And now, so pundits say, his arc is flattening, pausing to plunge, headed for a hard, fast fall.
Mr. Manchin is among three incumbent Senate Democrats elected in 2018 in states won by former President Donald Trump in 2020 and whose seats are on 2024 ballots.
The National Republican Senate Committee has focused on his seat, as well as those held by Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), as “most flippable” in its 2024 drive to reclaim the majority in a chamber now led 51–49 by Democrats.
Before 2000, all three West Virginia congressional representatives were Democrats. Since then, the state’s House delegation has been all GOP. Republicans have controlled both state legislative chambers since 2015, and expanded that to a trifecta since 2018.
West Virginians have voted Republican in the last six presidential elections, including nearly 70 percent for President Trump in 2020.
He is the only West Virginia Democrat elected to represent the state.
While Mr. Manchin has voted with Republicans against raising the corporate tax, trimming COVID-related unemployment benefits, derailing Democrats’ election-reform bill, and refusing to modify filibuster rules, he’s also committed the unpardonable—he voted twice to impeach President Trump.
Hence, there’s no shortage of Republicans ready to seize Mr. Manchin’s Senate seat in a state that all election rating services shade as red, redder, reddest; a state where President Trump is the most popular president since FDR; a state where a “not-a-Washington-Democrat” moderate is a gray whale in a sea of hungry black-and-white orcas.
New and Less Blue
The two leading GOP rivals seeking to win the Senate seat held by Mr. Manchin are Gov. Jim Justice and Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.).Mr. Manchin recruited Mr. Justice to run for governor in 2015 as a Democrat. During an August 2017 rally, Mr. Justice joined then-President Trump to announce he was a Republican. Now, he’s running for Mr. Manchin’s Senate seat.
On Oct. 18, Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Justice in the Republican primary—aside from Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, his only 2024 Senate nod thus far—over Mr. Mooney, who he backed in his 2022 congressional campaign.
The Democrat primary, meanwhile, has no takers. Mr. Manchin hasn’t said if he’ll seek a fourth term in the Senate, nor if he’ll do so as a Democrat or as an independent. The filing deadline is in January 2024.
Over the years, Mr. Manchin has mentioned retirement—he’s been at this since the Reagan days—pondered becoming a Republican, and has often expressed disenchantment with both parties and the two-party system.
Since August, he’s openly teased running as an independent in the next phase of his political career, but hasn’t revealed any more than that.
Mr. Manchin has appeared in New Hampshire with No Labels, which is backing a 2024 independent presidential candidate. During the late-September Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, he said an independent presidential ticket could animate a nation paralyzed in hyperpartisan fiddle-fests.
“We are having a hard time. We are in trouble, and I’ve never been more concerned about the challenges we have,” he said, noting nearly a third of registered voters view both the Republican and Democratic parties negatively.
A third-party or independent candidate or “bipartisan ticket” could be viable right now, he said, because most Americans are concerned about the intractability of political parties dominated by their most ideological extremes.
He offered, for example, himself as such a model candidate, not that he’s running for president.
At least not until January.
Campaigning for a Campaign
Mr. Manchin’s campaign committee reported that he’s sitting on $10.8 million in cash-on-hand as of Oct. 1, making him well-positioned for a 2024 campaign.
While Mr. Justice’s campaign reported only $800,000 in its Oct. 1 bank, he’s the state’s wealthiest man—he once owned 130 businesses—with a significant capacity to self-finance.
He lives at The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, “America’s Resort Since 1778,” an 11,000-acre, 710-room resort he owns that includes dozens of restaurants, lounges, and retail shops, drawing “Little Trump” comparisons.
Even before Mr. Trump’s endorsement, regardless if Mr. Manchin declares a run for reelection, Mr. Justice is the odds-on front-runner to be West Virginia’s next senator.
In an Oct. 1–4 Emerson College survey of 539 voters, Mr. Justice garnered 41 percent of the tally. Mr. Manchin finished third with just 28 percent. Undecided, or someone else, notched 31 percent.
The good news for Mr. Manchin is this poll and others nationwide confirm there are voters out there—maybe a third, maybe more, of the electorate—open to independent candidates or “bipartisan tickets.”
The bad news for Mr. Manchin is, in West Virginia anyway, a ticket with his name on it won’t sell. Not any more.
Outside South Charleston’s Gestamp metal-stamping plant, a $120 million, 350-employee factory rooted in tax credits and workforce development initiatives established while he was governor, Mr. Manchin assured reporters on Oct. 11 that he was getting closer to making a 2024 decision.
“I’m having a hard time—I really am,” he said when asked if he would run for something in 2024 and what something he would be. Democrat? Independent? Republican?
Maybe no party, maybe all of the above, he said.
“Don’t worry about the ‘D’ or the ‘R,’ worry about the person. Who is that person? There can be a good ‘D’ and a bad ‘D,’ and a good ‘R’ and a bad ‘R,’ but the identity? I like more the independent identity,” Mr. Manchin said. “The two-party system, unless it changes, will be the downfall of our country.”
