WASHINGTON _ Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Tuesday he'll remain in the U.S. Senate rather than run for governor, saving his party from having to defend a seat next year in a heavily Republican state.
Manchin's decision will be a lift to Democratic Party leaders, who already face long odds of gaining a Senate majority in the 2020 elections. Republicans now hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
It also avoids a hotly contested race with Republican Governor Jim Justice, a former Democrat who in 2017 announced at a rally with President Donald Trump that he was switching his party affiliation to Republican.
A former two-term governor, Manchin has built his own political brand even as the state has turned solidly Republican. Manchin last year narrowly won a second Senate term, even though Trump won the state by 42 percentage points in 2016 and campaigned heavily for Manchin's GOP challenger.
In his 2018 campaign, Manchin drew on his longstanding ties in the state and his record of bipartisanship, including voting for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He also highlighted his support for Obamacare and its protections for people with pre-existing health conditions and defended himself against GOP attacks for his vote against the 2017 GOP tax cuts.
Manchin, the top Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, voted with Trump more than 61% of the time in the last two-year session of Congress, more than any other Democrat, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.com.
