Secretary of state says “sore loser” law prevents Blankenship from running as a minor-party candidate after losing GOP primary

♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor

CHARLESTON, West Virginia (CFP) — Don Blankenship will not be allowed to run as the Constitution Party’s U.S. Senate candidate in West Virginia in November because of a state law that prohibits candidates who lose major-party primaries from making minor-party bids, the state’s top election official has decided.

Don Blankenship

The ruling by Secretary of State Mac Warner is a victory for Mountaineer State Republicans, who feared a third-party bid by Blankenship would siphon off votes from their nominee, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is trying to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin.

However, Blankenship has indicated he would challenge any attempt to keep him off the ballot, and Warner has already hired outside legal counsel for the expected court fight.

Blankenship, the former CEO of Massey Energy, spent a year in federal prison for violating mine safety regulations after 29 miners died in an explosion in his company’s Upper Big Branch Mine in 2010, the deadliest U.S. mine accident in the last 40 years.

Insisting that he was unfairly prosecuted by the Obama Justice Department, he launched a campaign for the Republican nomination for Manchin’s Senate seat. His candidacy unsettled GOP leaders, who feared his nomination would hand Manchin an easy re-election.

During the campaign, Blankenship carried on a nasty public feud with the top Republican in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, even airing a TV ad calling him “Cocaine Mitch,” a spurious charge based on a report that cocaine had been found on a ship belonging to a shipping company owned by the family of McConnell’s Chinese-American wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

President Donald Trump also intervened before the May primary, urging his supporters not to vote for Blankenship, even though he had fashioned himself as an enthusiastic supporter of the president.

After finishing third in the Republican primary, Blankenship refused to endorse Morrisey and later accepted an offer from the Constitution Party to be its nominee. Because the party is not recognized as an official party in West Virginia, Blankenship then had to collect at least 4,400 signatures to get on the ballot.

In a July 26 letter to Blankenship, Warner, a Republican, said that while Blankenship did collect enough petition signature to qualify as the Constitution Party’s candidate, his certification was being denied state law does not allow candidates who lose a primary to change their registration to run as a member of a third party.

West Virginia is one of 40 states with “sore loser” or “sour grapes” laws that prohibit primary losers from trying to run in a general election.

Blankenship’s effort to get into the general election after running into primary difficulty is not without precedent in recent U.S. Senate elections.

In 2006, then-U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut created his own party to run in the general election after losing a Democratic primary. He won in November.

In 2010, in Florida, then-Governor Charlie Crist ran for the Senate as a Republican but switched to an independent candidacy after it was clear he would be unlikely to win the GOP primary against Marco Rubio. Rubio won that race; Crist was elected to the U.S. House in 2016.

Manchin — running for re-election as a Democrat in a state Trump won by 40 points in 2016 — is at the top of the Republicans’ target list. However, recent public polling has consistently shown him with a lead over Morrisey