West Virginia Rep. Alex Mooney, who made Trump’s endorsement the centerpiece of his campaign in the first sitting vs. incumbent primary of the year, will win the GOP nomination for the state’s 2nd congressional district, DailyExpertNews Projects. But Nebraska Republican Jim Pillen, a pig farmer and member of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents who ran with the support of Provisional Government Pete Ricketts, will beat a Trump-backed candidate for the state’s GOP governor nod, DailyExpertNews- projects.
Trump had backed Charles Herbster, a businessman, rancher and rancher who faces allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has denied. The former president traveled to the state earlier this month to defend Herbster at a rally, claiming he was a “good man” who had been “badly vilified.”
Trump’s influence was felt during May’s GOP primaries as candidates clamor for his support, especially after his pick won the Ohio Senate race last week. The candidates he supported in Tuesday’s selection contests stood by his side during his baseless campaign to cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election.
Mooney, a former Maryland state senator, had been dealing with six-year-old Representative David McKinley after Mountain State lost a district in the redistribution process following the census.
West Virginia, a state that has twice won Trump by overwhelming majority, tested the importance of his support. Mooney had won Trump’s approval in part because he objected to Pennsylvania’s electoral count as Congress confirmed Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.
During his Tuesday night speech, Mooney praised the importance of the former president’s approval and said he could interrupt his victory speech at any time to take a call from Trump.
“Donald Trump loves West Virginia and West Virginia loves Donald Trump,” Mooney said. He nodded at Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s support for McKinley, which included an ad the senator had deleted attacking Mooney. “We won anyway,” Mooney said.
Mooney teased a potential US Senate bid against Manchin, who will be re-elected in 2024. “This is the second time Joe Manchin has done a TV ad attacking me. I’m 2-for-0 against him. Maybe I should make it 3. -and-0,” he cheered.
McKinley had voted to certify Biden’s victory and had supported the formation of an independent commission to investigate the January 6, 2021 uprising — an effort that was eventually picked up in the Senate, but nonetheless provoked Trump’s ire. He also supported the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which Trump opposed.
Mooney, who was first elected to the House in 2014, had attacked McKinley as “a liberal” for supporting that bipartisan legislation, but there was no subtlety in his ads when he praised the former president’s support.
One of those charged with a “MAGA Alert” accused McKinley of supporting “(House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi’s anti-Trump, January 6 witch hunt.” And in a radio ad that ran through the district in the last days, Trump called Mooney “a warrior.”
Mooney described his win on Tuesday as a victory over Pelosi and government officials who he said had gone too far with masks and Covid-19 protocols.
In addition to Manchin, who had praised McKinley for resisting “reckless spending” that could harm the people of his state, the congressman had the backing of Republican government leader Jim Justice, a former Democrat who transferred his party registration to the GOP in 2017. .
McKinley had attacked Mooney as a newcomer to the state who failed to understand the depth of his concerns, drawing attention to the fact that Mooney had moved to the state in the past decade from Maryland, where he chaired the state’s GOP.
Manchin alluded to that attack on the carpet dredger in the ad, stating that Mooney and his “out-of-state supporters” were spreading the “outright lie” that McKinley supported Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which had killed Manchin, citing concerns about inflation and spending.
“Alex Mooney has proven that he is all about Alex Mooney. But the people of West Virginia know that David McKinley is all about us,” Manchin said in the ad.
The Race of the Governor of Nebraska
Heading into Tuesday, Trump’s candidate was in a close three-way race against Pillen and state senator Brett Lindstrom.
While Trump won the state with 58% of the vote against Biden’s 39% in 2020, Ricketts had approved Pillen as the candidate to succeed him and had actively campaigned against Herbster, who he described as unqualified for the job. Recent interviews in the state suggest that the popular governor’s support could carry as much, if not more, weight than Trump’s endorsement for many of the state’s GOP voters.
Herbster had grappled with the fallout from a mid-April report in the Nebraska Examiner detailing the stories of seven women who said they were groped by him at political events or beauty pageants, and another woman who accused him of violently assaulting her. To kiss. The investigator said all eight stories were confirmed by witnesses or people who spoke to the women about what happened immediately after.
Herbster dismissed the allegations in an interview with DailyExpertNews as a “politically timed defamation” and said they were “100% false.” Taking the aggressive tactics Trump has championed during his own controversies, Herbster sued his former accuser, Republican state Senator Julie Slama.
sexually abused her by pulling up her skirt and touching her without permission at a GOP dinner in 2019. In the lawsuit, he alleged that her statements caused “heavy damage to his reputation” and she filed a counterclaim.
As part of his defense, Herbster alleged that his opponents used the same playbook they used against Trump in the 2016 campaign and then Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Both men were charged with sexual assault — charges they denied.
This story has been updated with additional information.
