Days after he was re-elected to a 5th term in the House, Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) announced he will be challenging West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin in 2024.
“I’m announcing right now that I am officially running for the United States Senate for the seat that’s open in two years that Joe Manchin currently is in and I’m all in,” Mooney said during a radio interview on Tuesday.
The congressman said he is not happy with the results of the midterms because Republicans failed to take the majority in the Senate. He considers Manchin’s seat to be an easy target for Republicans in 2024 considering that it is a reliably red state where Trump won nearly 70 percent of the vote in the last presidential election.
Manchin, 75, has been a headache for Democrats in the evenly divided Senate. He derailed some of the Biden administration’s key policies and even a Cabinet nominee.
Still, Mooney called Manchin “the chief enabler of Joe Biden,” and a “liberal Democrat.”
Mooney’s frustration with Manchin goes back to the West Virginia GOP primary in May where the Democratic senator appeared in a campaign ad for Mooney’s challenger, fellow Republican Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.). West Virginia lost a House seat after the 2020 census and the two GOP representatives were forced to run against each other.
“I don’t know how arrogant you have to be to think that as a Democrat U.S. senator, you can instruct Republicans who vote in primaries how to vote,” Mooney said at the time.
It’s unclear if Manchin will run for re-election, but several top Republicans, including Gov. Jim Justice and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, are already considering running for the seat.
“A robust democratic process has never been more important to our country and Senator Manchin encourages every candidate who values public service to enter the race,” Manchin’s communication director, Sam Runyon, said in a statement Tuesday following Rep. Mooney’s announcement.
