Sen. Joe Manchin Becomes Target In Democratic Senate Primaries

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is not on the ballot in November.

But that isn’t stopping many Democratic Senate candidates from effectively running against him in competitive primaries.

Whether attacking Manchin on Twitter, invoking his name to raise money, or accusing rivals of resembling the conservative Democratic senator, Manchin’s prominence in key intraparty contests attests to how much of a villain he has become to Democratic primary voters.

Along with Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D), Manchin has been scorned by Democrats for blocking President Joe Biden’s key priorities, including the Build Back Better social spending and climate bill, and a filibuster carve-out for voting rights legislation.

“It’s definitely effective for fundraising and ginning up the activist base,” Mike Mikus, a Pittsburgh-based Democratic consultant said. “The only open question is: Does it have electoral success? That’s something we’ll find out as the primaries progress.”

Mikus said he’s never seen Democratic Senate primaries pick up so much steam from attacks against a Democrat from another state. There used to be more conservative Democrats like Manchin, Mikus said, making it harder to train anger on a single person.

In Pennsylvania, three Democrats are vying for the chance to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey: U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.

Fetterman and Kenyatta, who are both running to Lamb’s left, have targeted Manchin in fundraising emails and social media posts. 

Fetterman has issued five press releases blasting Manchin and has invoked Manchin in at least seven fundraising emails. He even penned a CNN op-ed in June calling Manchin out for refusing to support a filibuster exception for voting rights and election integrity legislation designed to avoid another Jan. 6-style effort to overturn a presidential election. 

“Some Democrats , like Manchin, who are refusing to reform the filibuster are telling us that allegiance to a flawed Senate rule is more important to them than democracy itself,” Fetterman wrote.

Kenyatta has dinged Manchin 14 times on Twitter since April, questioning everything from his commitment to “working families” and the Democratic Party to his support for preserving democracy itself.

“There’s no excuse for defending a Jim Crow era relic,” Kenyatta tweeted in June, referring to Manchin’s support for the filibuster. “Sen. Manchin is pissing away the best chance we have to preserve our Democracy and for what?”

Lamb, who is running as a mainstream moderate, has broken with Manchin on the core issues. An ally of organized labor who backs expanding Social Security, Lamb voted for the Build Back Better bill that Manchin is obstructing and supports eliminating the filibuster altogether. In a January fundraising email, Lamb lamented how “Senate Republicans and two Democrats” – Manchin and Sinema – had used the filibuster to block a vote on voting rights legislation, asking for support so he could use his seat to eliminate the filibuster and advance the legislation.

Across the border in Ohio, Rep. Tim Ryan, the moderate favorite in the Democratic Senate primary, and attorney Morgan Harper, a progressive upstart, have both tried to lay claim to the anti-Manchin mantle.

Ryan, who voted for Build Back Better in the House, has blasted Manchin and Sinema for holding up the multifaceted budget legislation in fundraising emails , on Twitter , in the media , and even in Facebook ads . And like virtually every Democrat running in a competitive Senate race, he supports repealing the filibuster. 

Harper has been even more outspoken in her frustrations with Manchin, quipping that she “voted for Joe Biden , not Joe Manchin.”

In Wisconsin, state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, the EMILY’s List candidate in the race to oust GOP Sen. Ron Johnson, has been the most vocal in recent months among her competitors about her opposition to Manchin. She’s put out statements decrying Manchin and Sinema for slow-rolling negotiations on Build Back Better, and pointed fingers at Manchin in local newspaper interviews for being the reason Wisconsinites can’t access paid leave.

“Republicans and some Democrats like Manchin and Sinema are blocking important legislation that would help millions of Americans because they are more beholden to special interests than they are to the American people,” Godlewski told HuffPost in a statement. She said she hears from voters all the time about the senators’ obstructionism, including on her recent tour of Wisconsin’s rural districts — a sign that the frustration isn’t just concentrated in the state’s liberal strongholds.

“I hear from people every day who are frustrated that any one senator has the power to stand in the way of the things that would make their lives better,” said Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a leading candidate in the Democratic Senate race who has been endorsed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Cory Booker (N.J.).

Tom Nelson, executive of Outagamie County, who is running for the Senate nomination as a populist with traction in rural parts of the state, has gone so far as to compare Manchin – and Sinema – with Johnson, the extremist Republican incumbent.

“Sinema and Manchin and Johnson. What do they all have in common? They wouldn’t step up to protect our democracy,” Nelson wrote in a January tweet soliciting online donations.

Manchin has become so toxic in primaries that any ties to him have become a vulnerability for some moderate Democrats – even when rival candidates are not openly using it against them. 

In Ohio, progressive candidate Harper is casting doubt on where Ryan stands on the Democratic agenda because his campaign accepted a $5,000 contribution from Manchin’s PAC, Country Roads , which has received major support from corporations opposed to key elements of Build Back Better. In a statement on Friday, Harper tied Ryan’s receipt of donations from Manchin to his refusal to disavow direct contributions from corporate PACs. 

“This is just one more way for Tim Ryan to accept corporate cash,” Harper said. “Manchin’s PAC is funded by Republicans, big banks, and defense contractors. How can we trust Ryan to act in Ohio’s best interest when this is who funds his campaigns?”

Ryan has consistently denied that he bases any of his decisions on the views of his campaign donors.

“Tim answers to the people of Ohio and he’ll always do what’s right for Ohio, even if that means standing up to members of his own party or President Biden—a clear contrast with the clown car of anti-worker country club elitists running against him,” Izzi Levy, a Ryan campaign spokesperson, told HuffPost in a statement. 

In Pennsylvania, the attacks are less explicit. Neither Kenyatta nor Fetterman have explicitly tried to conflate Lamb with Manchin.

But that hasn’t stopped some progressive Pennsylvanians, like labor economist Mark Price , from trying. They note that Lamb, who has not gone after Manchin with the vigor that his rivals have, has ties to Manchin. 

Lamb, whose district borders West Virginia’s northern panhandle, welcomed Manchin’s endorsement during his 2020 reelection bid, saying on Facebook that he learned a lot from Manchin while working with him on legislation saving coal miners’ pension funds. And while Manchin has not endorsed a candidate in the Pennsylvania Senate race, the two lawmakers participated in a joint fundraiser in 2021 as Lamb was gearing up for his Senate run, according to Politico .

Progressive critics have also seized on some of Lamb’s more conservative votes as evidence that his stances vary with the political winds. 

For example, in 2018 Lamb was one of just three Democrats to vote to make permanent then-President Donald Trump’s reductions in individual tax rates, which benefited high earners as well as middle-class taxpayers. (An opponent of Trump’s 2017 tax cut bill, Lamb nonetheless believed that it would be fairer to make the individual cuts last as long as the corporate cuts; the Build Back Better legislation he voted for in November would restore the pre-Trump income tax rate for top earners and levy a new 3% surtax on millionaires.)

“Conor Lamb is a wolf in lamb’s clothing,” said Bethany Hallam, a member of the Allegheny County Council supporting Kenyatta. “He’s going to be a Manchin.” 

“People should pay a price for bad votes,” Hallam added. “You can take a million votes and have a couple good votes to run on, but the reality is we have to look at voting records as a whole.”

Still, other Pennsylvania Democrats supporting Lamb’s rivals refuse to compare Lamb to Manchin.

“I don’t think [Lamb’s] another Manchin,” said James Heckman, a Fetterman supporter and member of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee from McKean County. “He’s a moderate for sure, but I do think he will stand with us on the core issues if he’s elected to the Senate.”