Why Is McCain Favored in West Virginia?

One of the golden rules of American politics — before the year 2000 — used to be that non-incumbent Republican candidates for president didn’t win West Virginia.

A Republican candidate had to be an incumbent running for re-election (and on his way to a landslide victory) before he had a chance to win West Virginia.

Bob Dole couldn’t carry the state against President Clinton in 1996. George H.W. Bush failed to carry it twice. Ronald Reagan didn’t carry West Virginia in 1980, but he did carry it when he ran for re-election four years later.

Reagan’s experience with West Virginia was much like Richard Nixon’s. Nixon lost West Virginia to John F. Kennedy in 1960 and to Hubert Humphrey in 1968, but he won it in his re-election campaign in 1972.

And so it goes … all the way back to 1928, when non-incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover carried West Virginia against the first Catholic nominee for president, Al Smith.

West Virginia began as part of the state of Virginia, but the mountainous section of the state (which had few slaves) seceded during the Civil War. The state began its existence allied with the Republicans, like most of the Northern states in the Civil War and Reconstruction days (although there were probably as many West Virginians who fought and died for the Confederacy as the Union side).

And the shift to the Democrats seems to have been based more on economic factors than anything else — West Virginia began to support the Democratic tickets around the same time that labor unions were emerging in coal country and jobs became more scarce in the Great Depression.

In 1928, though, the national economy was humming along, and the unions hadn't yet made their presence known in West Virginia. And the religious suspicions of the Protestants may have played a key role in Smith's defeat in West Virginia. I know that general anti-Catholic sentiment hurt Smith elsewhere in the United States that year, but the apparently strong economy may have helped Hoover and the Republicans even more.

Certainly, the suspicions that West Virginia’s Protestant voters held about John F Kennedy in the state’s primary campaign 32 years later are the stuff of American political legend.

But, by 1960, enough Protestants in that state were persuaded to vote for the Catholic candidate that he was able to win the primary and secure the nomination, demonstrating his broad-based political appeal.

Ironically, as Theodore H. White observed in ”The Making of the President 1960,” Kennedy’s sole remaining active primary challenger, Hubert Humphrey, had effectively been eliminated by his recent finish in the Wisconsin primary.

”If, realizing this, Humphrey had withdrawn at that moment, Kennedy would have faced zero opposition in the West Virginia primary,” White wrote. ”[T]hus, any Kennedy victory there would have proved nothing and been meaningless.”

One can only wonder what would have happened to Kennedy’s presidential ambitions if deprived of Humphrey’s opposition in that primary. Certainly, history might have been changed if Kennedy had not been able to triumph over the ”religious question” in West Virginia.

Anyway, the stock market crashed in 1929, and for the next seven decades, non-incumbent Republicans never managed to win West Virginia.

But trends change. If George W. Bush had not carried West Virginia in 2000, the outcome in Florida would not have mattered.

Today, many political observers say they believe John McCain will become the second consecutive non-incumbent Republican nominee to carry the state.

In 2008, of course, religion is not the issue. In fact, today, West Virginia’s governor is Catholic — and he’s very popular.

The issue in 2008 is race. Nearly 95% of West Virginians are white.

But West Virginia's history should imply a supportive nature for Obama's candidacy.

Will Obama’s experience in West Virginia be like that other ground-breaking Democratic nominee, Al Smith, or will it be more like John F. Kennedy’s?

Glancing at the demographics, you’d think that Obama would be favored against John McCain in West Virginia. It’s a Democratic year, and 57% of West Virginia’s voters are registered Democrats.

But McCain appears to be popular in West Virginia, a state that has already voted heavily against Obama in its primary.

There are two major statewide races in West Virginia this year, and both offices are held by popular Democrats.

• Sen. Jay Rockefeller is running for his fifth term in office. Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics reports that the state’s largest newspaper, the Charleston Gazette, endorsed Rockefeller in April with an editorial that anticipated that the popular Rockefeller would triumph ”with such ease he needn't bother campaigning.”
  
  It’s easy to see why Rockefeller is expected to breeze to another term. He received 63% of the vote in what turned out to be a surprisingly Republican midterm election in 2002, and he captured 77% of the vote while Bill Clinton was being re-elected in 1996.
  
  Rockefeller won his first term in 1984, when he took 52% of the vote while Reagan’s bid for re-election was being endorsed by 55% of West Virginia’s voters. He was re-elected with 68% of the vote in 1990.
  
  Rockefeller is paired against the same Republican he defeated in 2002, former state Sen. Jay Wolfe.
  
  ”Rockefeller should easily hold the seat,” Sabato says. I don’t think anyone disputes that.


• For that matter, I don’t think anyone disputes that Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin will be re-elected relatively easily.
  
  Manchin probably came to national attention during the Sago mine disaster in early 2006. There was a mix-up in which Manchin was assumed to have confirmed false reports that most of the miners had survived when, in fact, only one survived.
  
  Manchin acknowledged what had happened and emerged from the disaster apparently more popular than ever — and he was already quite popular, having been elected governor in 2004 with more than 63% of the vote.
  
  ”Manchin is sitting in the catbird’s seat,” Sabato writes.
  
  As of June 16, Manchin had more than $2.5 million in his campaign warchest; his Republican opponent, former state Sen. Russ Weeks, had raised a mere $10,000.
  
  Sabato has labeled the re-election bids for both Rockefeller and Manchin as ”solid Democratic” victories on Election Day.


• West Virginia has only three House seats. Two are held by Democrats, and both of those incumbents seem to be in good shape.
  
  Sabato is keeping his eye on the 2nd district, which has been represented by Republican Shelley Moore Capito since 2000.
  
  Although Capito was able to take 57% of her district’s vote in the Democratic year of 2006, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has targeted her for defeat, and her opponent, Anne Barth, should benefit from the DCCC’s financial input.
  
  Even so, Capito’s district gave George W. Bush 57% of its vote in 2004 and 54% of its vote in 2000 — when West Virginia voted for a non-incumbent Republican candidate for president for the first time in more than 70 years.
  
  Sabato believes the district is ”likely” to remain in Republican hands.
  
  Capito will be counting on McCain to provide the kind of boost her campaign will need from the GOP's presidential nominee.