With his loss in the Republican West Virginia primary for the Senate seat currently held by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), I thought Don Blankenship was finished with politics for this season, but it turns out I was wrong. From Politico:
West Virginia coal baron and former prisoner Don Blankenship announced on Monday that he plans to launch a long-shot third-party Senate bid after finishing a distant third in this month’s Republican primary.
Blankenship said he would run in the general election as the Constitution Party nominee. But he would need to overcome a “sore loser” law in West Virginia that prevents failed candidates in a main-party primary from refiling to run in the general election under another party’s banner.
Is Blankenship serious? A third place finish suggests those he thought were his natural constituency have rejected him, and his conviction on misdemeanor charges of conspiring to run his mine without regard to safety regulations, resulting in the deaths of 23 miners, will alienate those for whom Big Government doesn’t cause immediate heavy sweating.
In fact, I’m left with two alternatives. Either Mr. Blankenship has such a monstrous ego that he thinks he can pull off a miracle, or this is all about political extortion. In the latter case, his eventual goal is currently unclear. Perhaps a position in the RNC? A senior position in the local GOP?
The latter alternative seems the most likely. Keep an eye out for the ascent of Mr. Blankenship to a senior position. And possibly, a few months later, his sudden fall from grace as some sort of scandal comes to light.
And then question will be whether it’s a real scandal, or something engineered by the GOP extremist establishment.
