From The Bluefield Daily Telegraph:
Will he or won’t he? It is one of the biggest questions swirling around West Virginia politics at the moment.
Joe Manchin, a Democrat who was just re-elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate last year, has been openly talking in recent weeks about the possibility of running for governor of West Virginia in 2020.
In an interview with the Bluefield Daily Telegraph last fall, Manchin, who is a former governor of the state, emphasized how much he enjoyed being governor.
“The governor was the best job I ever had in my life,” Manchin said. “I was in a position to do things. I could get things done. We helped a lot of people.”
Manchin has also recently been more critical of some of the actions of incumbent Republican Governor Jim Justice, as well as his 2018 Republican challenger and current West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.
Just last week, Manchin called a $37 million settlement made by Justice and Morrisey with McKesson Corporation for flooding the state with opioids for years “horrific and inadequate.” He suggested that Justice and Morrisey had failed the state with that settlement agreement.
Has the 2020 campaign for governor already started?
For his part, Justice has suggested in recent weeks that he wouldn’t be surprised if Manchin was his challenger in 2020. …
