This blog originally appeared at The Guardian.
The departure of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin marks a low point for the party in the state, as Republicans strengthen their hold.
Snacking on appetizers from American-flag printed paper plates in the basement of city hall, a gathering of Democratic voters were engaged in discussions about getting involved in politics. It was during this moment that Terri Rodebaugh stood up to voice a concern.
“One thing I want to say is I’m tired of being called a baby killer, which I am not,” expressed Rodebaugh, clad in a pink shirt with gray hair, echoing the sentiments shared by other party loyalists and pro-choice West Virginians in Nicholas County.
For a considerable part of the 20th century, voters in Nicholas County and many other parts of West Virginia consistently supported the Democratic Party, even during challenging times. This trend shifted in 2000 when George W. Bush secured the state’s electoral votes. By 2020, almost 78% of Nicholas County voters had chosen Donald Trump. In the overall context of West Virginia, the state gave Trump the second-highest level of support compared to any other state in the nation.
A few weeks before that year’s election, the then president’s adherents paraded through the county seat Summersville, and the Democrats held a counterprotest. Trump supporters then turned up outside the party’s offices in their pickup trucks, burning out their tires and kicking up gravel. The landlords called not long after and told the Democrats to leave, and ever since, the party has been itinerant, meeting in churches, restaurants and, most recently, Summersville’s city hall.
“I never dreamed Nicholas county would ever go Republican,” said 81-year-old John Jarrell, who has served on the local party committee for decades. “And I never dreamed West Virginia would ever go Republican.”
The Democratic party’s power in the state now seems on the brink of reaching its nadir.
Even as the GOP was consolidating its hold on the state’s politics, voters kept electing one Democrat: Joe Manchin, a two-term governor who won a Senate seat in 2010 and just over a decade later became one of the most controversial politicians in the country for refusing to support proposals by Joe Biden to fight the climate crisis, poverty and a host of other social ills.
Manchin was scheduled to face voters again in 2024, and whether he could win a third full term representing his ruby red state was a subject of fierce debate. Now, West Virginians will never learn the answer – earlier this month, Manchin announced he would not run again for the Senate, and is openly mulling a third-party run for the presidency.
Few politics watchers believe any other Democrat can win Manchin’s seat, and by the start of 2025, the party may hold none of West Virginia’s statewide elected offices for the first time since 1931.
“We’re going to be underrepresented,” Pam Tucker-Cline, the chair of the Nicholas county Democratic party, said of Manchin’s exit as the 27 supporters who turned up for the meeting filtered out into the Summersville evening. “I don’t think people realize what he’s done for the state.”
Party leaders refuse to give up, but acknowledge they’re not quite sure what the path back to power is in a state that lacks so much of what makes Democrats successful elsewhere.
“We don’t plan to give up on any seat, and we know that the odds are against us, but we feel that West Virginians are worth fighting for,” said Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic party chair and a lawmaker in the state house of delegates.
“It’s been extremely hard for anybody with a D after their name in rural America, as of late, but we feel that things are definitely never static in politics, things are always changing.”
Click here to see full blog: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/24/west-virginia-democrats-joe-manchin
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