US Senator Joe Manchin announced on Thursday that he will not seek re-election, a blow to Democrats’ prospects for keeping the Senate majority in 2025.
Manchin, 76, is widely seen as the only realistic chance for Democrats to keep the seat in Republican-trending West Virginia, which Donald Trump won by 39 percentage points in 2020.
He hinted in his statement at a potential presidential run as a third-party candidate, which risks drawing support away from US President Joe Biden’s bid for re-election.
“What I will be doing is travelling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilise the middle and bring Americans together,” Manchin said in a statement.
Manchin is an original honorary co-chairman of No Labels, a group that started as a centrist policy group but which is now laying the groundwork for a possible third-party campaign for president.
He also took part in a No Labels event in New Hampshire in July, declining to rule out a presidential run as he complained that “There’s no voice for the middle” in US politics.
Manchin has US$11.3 million left in his Senate re-election account that he could transfer to a presidential campaign. That sum is enough to kick-start a White House run. No Labels has also been courting donors to fund their effort to get a candidate on the ballot.
Democratic leaders had strongly recruited Manchin to run for re-election to the Senate.
US Senator Manchin says ‘thinking seriously’ about leaving Democratic Party
US Senator Manchin says ‘thinking seriously’ about leaving Democratic Party
West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who switched from Democrat to Republican during the Trump administration, and conservative congressman Alex Mooney, are running for the Republican nomination for the Senate seat.
An Emerson College poll last month showed Justice leading Manchin by 13 percentage points, 41 per cent to 28 per cent.
Senator Steve Daines of Montana, who heads Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, offered a succinct response to Manchin’s decision.
“We like our odds in West Virginia,” he said.
Manchin has often frustrated his fellow Democrats, particularly when he torpedoed Biden’s multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better bill in 2021 and, later, blocked an effort to weaken the Senate’s filibuster rule to pass other Democratic priorities including a sweeping voting rights package.
But Manchin’s backing proved key to a series of bipartisan deals on infrastructure and many other issues, and he was the principal author of the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes provisions on climate and energy, Medicare prescription drug price cuts, increased tax enforcement and imposed a new 15 per cent minimum tax on corporations making at least US$1 billion a year.