![]() “And after years of having to fight our own party to get a seat at the table, I look forward to fighting Republicans at the ballot box instead of useless Democrats at committee meetings.” ![]() “We won every officer seat we ran for,” said Shane Assadzandi, one of the organizers behind the new slate. ![]() After receiving Manchin’s endorsement for state delegate, she went on to blast the senator for his repeated attacks on Democratic priorities, like refusing to block the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and his failure to save the Mylan pharmaceutical plant in her district. Walker, an unabashed progressive, is the real triumph of the movement. In the vice chair position now sits Danielle Walker, a state delegate who appears to be the first person of color to sit on the executive committee in West Virginia history. Instead, he’s focused on rebuilding the party through the same bread-and-butter issues he pursued in the House of Delegates: job creation, addressing the opioid crisis, and allying with House libertarians to successfully pass a medical marijuana legalization bill. Pushkin is a cautious left-leaning liberal, one who tends to abstain from attacking Manchin head-on. Unlike the Democratic Party upset in Nevada, which saw the Democratic Socialists of America overthrow a calcified political machine with a vast progressive ground game, West Virginia’s insurgents pulled it off by outmaneuvering a decaying party leadership grown accustomed to uncontested elections - using the DNC’s own bylaws.Īt the helm of the new executive committee is party Chair Mike Pushkin, a cab driver, musician, and member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. The new slate of West Virginia Democrats is made up of a broad coalition of activists - including moderates - seeking to disrupt Manchin’s power. While Democrats treated West Virginia as a lost cause, the state and its party apparatus fell into disrepair at the hands of Manchin, who blamed his party’s statewide failures on progressive trends in the national party rather than his own lack of incentive to help anyone but himself and his allies. ![]() In the general election against Clinton, Trump emerged with nearly 70 percent of the Mountain State vote. The lack of Democratic support for one of the most impoverished and isolated regions of Appalachia culminated in a Republican takeover that started in the early 2000s and reached its peak with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory. The recent upset offers hope that by populating the lower offices with Democrats who are committed to serving the public instead of favor-trading for personal gain, Manchin will no longer be the party’s only candidate who can run statewide and win. There was outgoing state party Chair Belinda Biafore, who survived an attempted ousting over her handling of state party diversity, and former Manchin chief of staff Larry Puccio, who notoriously switched political parties after his departure. That’s thanks largely to the inaction of a state party that until recently was composed entirely of Manchin loyalists. Republicans now hold the governor’s office, supermajorities in both houses of the West Virginia Legislature, and every statewide office save for Manchin’s.
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