Former coal CEO announces run for Senate as a Democrat in West Virginia

Don Blakenship, who was once known for being “Trumpier than Trump,” is now running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in West Virginia, as per a filing on the West Virginia secretary of state’s website.

He originally gained attention during the 2018 West Virginia Senate race, when he was running in the GOP primary. During that time, then-President Donald Trump had been urging West Virginians to support Blankenship’s opponents, to which he responded by saying, “… [S]ome have said I am Trumpier than Trump, and this morning proves it.”

Blankenship elaborated, “The president is a very busy man and he doesn’t know me, and he doesn’t know how flawed my two main opponents are in this primary.”

In a phone interview with WV News, Blankenship mentioned that he switched parties eight months ago.

He explained, “When I ran in 2018, they sort of violated their party,” referring to Republican election tactics. “They put out stories that were false. But the most important thing to me is this drug epidemic in West Virginia is not being addressed by the Republican Party, and neither are the problems in the country.”

He criticized the government, calling it “American’s worst enemy,” and added, “[A]nd they are, in fact, destroying America while we’re being led to believe that there’s a fight between the left and right going on, when in fact it’s the government destroying us.”

Blakenship served a year in prison for conspiring to violate safety standards at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine prior to an explosion in 2010 that resulted in the deaths of 29 men.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has been in office since 2010, is retiring at the end of this year. Republicans see his departure as an opening to a winnable seat with Trump taking the state with almost 70% of the votes cast in 2020. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a former Democrat who switched parties in 2017, is the odd-on favorite to take the GOP nomination in 2024.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.