West Virginia Rep. David McKinley became the first member of Congress to lose renomination in 2022 after his Trump-backed colleague, Alex Mooney, defeated him 54-36 in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the 2nd District. While Mooney is under investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics for allegedly spending campaign funds on personal expenses, he should have no trouble in the fall in a seat in the northern part of the state that would have supported Trump 68-31.
Both congressmen decided to campaign here after West Virginia lost one of its three seats due to population loss, and while McKinley currently represents 66% of the new 2nd District, it was Mooney who proved to be a better fit for today’s GOP. While the two Republicans largely voted the same way during their time in office, Mooney and his allies at the well-funded Club for Growth made sure to highlight his colleague-turned-rival's support for a Jan. 6 commission. Mooney’s side ran ad after ad hitting McKinley for voting for the Biden administration's infrastructure bill, and McKinley was unable to convince enough primary voters that the legislation was vital for the state.
McKinley, who had the support of Gov. Jim Justice, responded by trying to frame the race as a battle between a seventh-generation West Virginian and Mooney, a former Maryland state senator who only moved to the state in 2013 ahead of his first congressional bid. McKinley also took the unusual step of running a commercial starring Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who cited his own opposition to Build Back Better to push back on Mooney’s charges that McKinley supported it. McKinley didn’t hesitate to go after the investigations into Mooney, and he even aired a spot late in the race that showed a digitally altered image of Mooney in a prison jumpsuit.
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McKinley said weeks before the primary, “Maybe I’m just Don Quixote … But I believe in my heart that America wants us to work together.” However, he found out the hard way that he really was, in his words “chasing a windmill,” and that what GOP primary voters in West Virginia wanted instead was a full-throated Trump ally like Mooney, warts and all.
McKinley’s defeat also marked the end of a political career that started in 1980 when he was first elected to the state House and continued with his service as state party chair in the early 1990s. McKinley went on to run for governor in 1996 but took third in the GOP primary against eventual winner Cecil Underwood, who'd previously held the governorship all the way back in the 1950s.
McKinley, though, got the chance to return to elected office in 2010 when he sought to challenge Democratic Rep. Alan Mollohan, who had faced a number of ethical probes in recent years, and national Republicans quickly touted him as a strong contender. The primary turned into an ugly affair, with one candidate, Mac Warner, outright saying he wouldn’t support McKinley in a general election because he’d “gone way over the line in personal attacks and distortions of the truth.” McKinley ended up defeating Warner (who is now West Virginia’s secretary of state) 35-27, but that result was overshadowed by state Sen. Mike Oliverio’s decisive Democratic primary victory over Mollohan.
Oliverio, who had attacked the incumbent from the right in an area where conservative Democrats were still the dominant faction, proved to be a tough opponent for McKinley even as Republicans gained strength nationwide, especially with the popular Gov. Manchin leading Team Blue’s ticket in the special election for Senate. However, while McKinley released an internal poll just after Labor Day that showed him trailing 41-36, he powered ahead with ads tying Oliverio to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Republican ended up winning in a tight 50.4-49.6; that same night, Mooney somehow lost re-election to the Maryland Senate despite that year's colossal GOP wave.
McKinley initially appeared to be in for a tough 2012 rematch against Oliverio, but he caught a break when he decided not to run again. (Oliverio later switched to the GOP.) West Virginia’s continuing shift to the GOP helped McKinley avoid a serious Democratic challenger for the next decade, but his luck finally came to an end in Tuesday’s Republican contest.
