Despite some polls that put incumbent Alex Mooney ahead of incumbent David McKinley, we were still surprised to see Mooney prevail. After all, this is McKinley’s home district — the counties McKinley previously represented account for more than half of the new District 2.
And for all that we criticize McKinley, he has done good things for West Virginia, the latest being his vote for the infrastructure bill that is pumping millions into the Mountain State to repair and replace our crumbing roads and bridges, among other much needed updates. (McKinley was adamantly against the Build Back Better Act, which we still believe would be a boon to West Virginia.) During his years in Congress, McKinley routinely directed more federal funds to West Virginia than Mooney did. We would have thought McKinley’s voting record would have spoken for itself.
But apparently Trump’s endorsement spoke louder.
It still boggles the mind that a man who built his career and lifestyle on screwing over working-class people wields so much power over such a blue-collar state. That a man who tried so hard to turn our country into a dictatorship has won the hearts and minds of the people in a state where 10% of the population has fought and served in the military to protect freedom and democracy. That the people of this state prioritize “owning the libs” and petty Twitter feuds over actual results. Despite his big talk, Trump was never able to produce a viable infrastructure bill, and he never did unveil his promised replacement for the Affordable Care Act.
And, yet, his words carry so much weight that voters ousted the only representative who actually helped West Virginia.
McKinley didn’t exactly help himself during his campaigning. It wasn’t even that Mooney outspent him by almost $100,000 — McKinley lied to voters, and voters may have punished him at the ballot box.
Granted, all politicians lie to voters. It’s only a question of in what way and to what extent. But McKinley may have crossed a line when he photoshopped himself into a picture of a Trump rally and pieced together bits of audio to make it sound like he had Trump’s support. We’re surprised it took Mooney’s campaign so long to release a rebuttal calling the ad out for the fake it was.
This deception may have cost McKinley any borderline voters who were undecided. As the thinking often goes, if he’s lying about this, what else is he lying about? Then again, it may have been McKinley’s and Mooney’s efforts to out-Trump each other that sent over 8,000 voters into the arms of other Republican candidates, though even that wouldn’t have pushed McKinley over the top.
The results of Tuesday’s Primary Election might just be a memorandum on the importance of voting — especially in the primary.
Around 81,000 Republicans in District 2, out of almost 449,000 total registered Republican voters, turned out for the primary — and fewer than 45,000 of them chose the person who will more than likely speak for almost 900,000 of us in the House of Representatives. Talk about minority rule.
