At McConnell’s Urging, Trump Asks West Virginians Not to Vote for Don Blankenship
May 8, 2018 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
That is partly because he has framed his conviction as a persecution by former President Obama’s Justice Department, a strategy aimed at tapping into the deep animus toward a former president who many in the state believe waged a “war on coal.”
And in recent weeks Mr. Blankenship dipped into his personal wealth to air a series of incendiary ads targeting the family of Mr. McConnell, the majority leader husband of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
“Swamp Captain Mitch McConnell has given millions of jobs to China People,” Mr. Blankenship said in one commercial, alluding to the shipping business of Mr. McConnell’s father-in-law, an American citizen. In another spot, Mr. Blankenship dubbed Mr. McConnell “Cocaine Mitch” for far-fetched claims that a ship connected to Ms. Chao’s father once smuggled drugs.
Mr. McConnell, who is deeply unpopular among Republican primary voters, has largely sidestepped the attacks, but his allies have continued to assail Mr. Blankenship on the state’s airwaves. Mr. Trump, though, had been silent until Monday.
The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., last week made a statement about the importance of stopping Mr. Blankenship. But until Monday, the closest the president had come to weighing in on the race was when he brought Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Morrisey to a tax-themed event he held in West Virginia and sat with them on either side. (He even polled the audience during the event to gauge who had more support in the room).
Part of the challenge for the establishment wing of the party has been that Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Morrisey have largely targeted one another, most recently during a bitter Fox News debate last week, and neither has been able to emerge as the clear front-runner. And Republican leaders did not have a strong preference between the two and so have not taken sides.
Mr. Jenkins is a former Democrat who represents the coal-producing part of the state, having upset a veteran incumbent in 2014, while Mr. Morrisey is a New Jersey transplant who made a name for himself suing the Obama administration.
