West Virginia has turned a nearly unrecognizable shade of red in recent years. Nowhere is this more evident than in the 3rd District, in the southern part of the state from Huntington through Bluefield and Beckley and including most of coal country.
Al Gore narrowly won it in 2000, 51-44—an election that saw George W. Bush became only the third Republican to carry the state since 1933, and the first to do so since then in an election that was not a national Republican landslide. Bush won it 53-46 over John Kerry in 2004. Then, in 2008, Gotterdammerung—even as Barack Obama romped to victory nationally, he lost the district to John McCain 56-42. Mitt Romney won it 65-33 in 2012. Then in 2016, Donald Trump won it by a whopping margin of 72.5-23.3 over Hillary Clinton.
That’s what makes two recent ratings changes by Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball all the more staggering. As you may know, a recent Monmouth University poll shows that Democratic state senator Richard Ojeda is leading Republican state delegate Carol Miller by 43-41 in a full sample, 47-41 in a typical midterm scenario, and 48-39 in a “Democratic wave” scenario.
Those numbers led David Wasserman of Cook Political Report to move the needle further in Ojeda’s direction.
Earlier, Cook Political Report had moved the race from “Safe Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
Sabato has since followed suit.
To put this in perspective, longtime Democratic congressman Nick Rahall was capsized in the 2014 Republican wave by Evan Jenkins—and it wasn’t even close, 55-44. Jenkins romped to a second term in 2016, taking almost 68 percent of the vote. To give you an idea how Democratic this district once was, this district had been in Democratic hands without interruption since 1957, and much of its southern portion hadn’t been represented by a Republican since 1933. However, it had been slipping away from Rahall for some time, and it appeared that Jenkins’ 2016 win put this district out of reach for the foreseeable future.
Ojeda looked like a pretty strong candidate—easily strong enough to keep whoever won the GOP primary tied down. But the fact that he’s leading is remarkable.
It cannot be stated enough, folks. This was one of Trump’s best districts in the Eastern Time Zone, and yet it’s very much on the radar screen five months out from Election Day. Imagine a Republican showing similar numbers in a district Hillary won by 30 or more. Simply put, if Ojeda can pull this off, in all likelihood the House has gone Democratic.
The D-Trip knows this too. Earlier today, Ojeda announced that he’d been named to the “Red to Blue” program.
Ojeda’s going to need a ton of help to keep this momentum, though. Let’s celebrate this momentous turn of events by giving him a money bomb. Click here to donate.