Now that the state of West Virginia has lost a congressional district, the stage is set for two Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives to battle in May during primary voting.
Rep. David McKinley, a West Virginia native who has represented the Mountain State’s first congressional district since 2010, will oppose Rep. Alex Mooney, a former Maryland resident who moved to Charles Town and won in 2014 to represent the second district. Three other Republicans also are on the ballot and two Democrats, Angela Dwyer from Martinsburg and Barry Lee Wendel of Morgantown, will fight for life in the November general election.
Greg Thomas, the president of Targeted Communication Strategies in the Charleston-Huntington areas, believes the McKinley-Mooney showdown will be one of the premier primary battles in the country.
“I do believe that race is going to be competitive in the First Congressional District,” Thomas said. “According to some of the early polling I have seen, Mooney has a decent lead right now because he has the Trump endorsement on his side, but McKinley is a campaigner and he’s tough. He’s going to go all over the place and be everywhere he can before that primary in May.
“The endorsement from former President Trump is a big deal for Mooney because of how popular Trump still is in West Virginia. He was more popular in West Virginia than in any other state,” he said. “Now, I don’t know how much more Trump will do for Mooney’s campaign, but the endorsement was given to Mooney because McKinley voted in favor of creating the Jan. 6 Commission.”
According to congressional voting records during Trump’s four years in the White House, McKinley voted in the former president’s favor 93.5 percent of the time while Mooney registered 92 percent.
“McKinley has always been a tough campaigner, and I expect he will be again because, from what I have seen since he was first elected back in 2010, he loves representing his area in West Virginia,” Thomas said. “Now, I think it’s fair for Mooney to point out the vote in favor of the Jan. 6 Commission, but it’s really tough to refer to McKinley as a ‘Rhino.’ He’s a guy who was the Republican Party chair in the 1990s, and he’s been involved with the Republican Party in West Virginia for a very long time.
“He’s Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and he’s been pro-business on a lot of different issues,” he reported. “That’s why calling McKinley a ‘Rhino’ is going too far, so I expect we’ll see McKinley be critical of Mooney for not being from West Virginia. He was an elected official in Maryland, and he moved to the Eastern Panhandle. That’s a message that is going to work for McKinley.”
May 10, 2022
Members of education boards will be elected, and so will magistrates, municipal officials, and candidates for county commission who could advance to the November general election.
But Thomas expects the Wheeling-area media to lend more attention to the McKinley-Mooney showdown at least during the next couple of months.
“And I really do believe this race will be more about just Trump and the state of Maryland,” the Republican operative insisted. “Those two topics may be the shots they take in the beginning, but it’s going to get more serious than that, and it’s going to get more issue-orientated than those two superficial issues. That’s why I believe the race is going to get very competitive.
“The reason for this particular primary is the redistricting that has taken place and the fact that West Virginia has lost a congressional district because of population loss. Mooney was already in Congress representing the people in the Eastern Panhandle, and McKinley already was in Congress representing a 20-county district in the north-central areas of the state. But now they are in the same district, and the two Republicans will go head-to-head in May.”
Thomas orchestrated McKinley’s 201o victory over Democrat Mike Oliverio after Oliverio had defeated long-time Congressman Alan Mollohan. Mollohan had represented the former first district from 1983 to 2011 and now resides in Fairmont at the age of 78.
So, if he was in charge of the McKinley at this time, what advice would he offer?
None, actually.
“I think McKinley already is doing everything I would have suggested to this point. He’s been going out in the public and reminding the voters how conservative his votes have been over the years,” he explained. “He also has worked getting in front of the areas of the district that are new to him.
“And Mooney has to do the same thing, but he also has to find where those very ‘Trumpy voters’ are because he then can work that endorsement,” Thomas added. “And as he looks for those voters, it’s not going to matter in what of the district he is because those are most likely the people who are going to support him the most.”
