Jim Justice, the popular Republican governor of West Virginia, has easily won election to the Senate, according to The Associated Press, in a widely predicted victory that helped shift control of the chamber closer to the G.O.P.
Mr. Justice, 73, captured the seat held by Senator Joe Manchin III, an independent who caucused with Democrats who declined to run again after Mr. Justice entered the race, making it all but certain that Democrats would lose a crucial Senate seat.
Mr. Justice defeated Glenn Elliott, the Democratic former mayor of Wheeling, after leading for months by large margins in the polls. The race was never seen as competitive given West Virginia’s solidly Republican electorate, and little money was spent on it.
Mr. Justice, who is known around West Virginia as “Big Jim,” boasted that he barely needed to campaign to win the seat, and he declined to schedule debates with Mr. Elliott.
“In the primary, I didn’t put a sign out,” he said during a news briefing. “Think about this for a second: I didn’t put one single sign up, and I won by 35-plus points. The people of this state know me. They know me, and they know me really well. I’ve done almost zero campaigning.”
It was a sign of how rural voters in the Appalachian state have shifted dramatically to the Republican Party. The state that once voted for Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan is now a reliable win for the G.O.P.
Mr. Justice was a registered Republican before becoming a Democrat in 2016 to run for governor. After he won, it was only a matter of months into his term before he appeared onstage at a rally with President Donald J. Trump in 2017 and announced that he was switching back to the G.O.P., following the lead of many of the state’s voters. (Mr. Trump had won there in 2016 by nearly 42 points.) Mr. Justice was easily re-elected in 2020, when Mr. Trump beat Joseph R. Biden Jr. by about 39 points in West Virginia.
Mr. Justice will be among the wealthiest members of Congress, having earned a fortune after inheriting a coal mining business from his father. He owns the Greenbrier, a sprawling luxury resort in the Allegheny Mountains that he bought out of bankruptcy in 2009.
His business has also incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid fines, judgments and other obligations by retired coal miners, multinational banks, neighboring states and the Department of the Interior. (Mr. Justice has said he turned over control to his children.) Voters appeared to care little about any of it in a state where Mr. Justice is well liked and known by almost everyone.
He is often seen at official events with his pet English bulldog, Babydog, who appeared with him onstage at the Republican National Convention over the summer, and who is expected to be a fixture in Washington when Mr. Justice joins the Senate.
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