West Vir­ginia Sen­ate pri­ma­ry will test NRSC’s strat­e­gy of tak­ing sides

KEARNEYSVILLE, West Vir­ginia — The loom­ing Sen­ate pri­ma­ry bat­tle between Gov. Jim Jus­tice (R‑WV) and Rep. Alex Mooney (R‑WV) in West Vir­ginia will be the first real test of the GOP Sen­ate cam­paign arm’s new strat­e­gy of tak­ing sides in Repub­li­can pri­maries this cycle, a depar­ture from the last elec­tion in 2022.
Near­ly a year ago, the West Vir­ginia gov­er­nor announced a run for Sen­ate, which was a major win for nation­al Repub­li­cans who had been recruit­ing the term-lim­it­ed gov­er­nor for months. How­ev­er, Mooney was already in the race and had the endorse­ment of the con­ser­v­a­tive Club for Growth. 
For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump endorsed Jus­tice in the Sen­ate race to replace out­go­ing Sen. Joe Manchin (D‑WV) in Octo­ber. At the time, what both sides didn’t know was that Sen. Joe Manchin (D‑WV) ulti­mate­ly would decide not to run for reelec­tion in Novem­ber, rais­ing spec­u­la­tion about a third-par­ty pres­i­den­tial run. How­ev­er, he ulti­mate­ly ruled out a White House bid in Feb­ru­ary under No Labels, the cen­trist group that aban­doned mov­ing for­ward with a bipar­ti­san uni­ty tick­et for the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. 

Rep. Alex Mooney (R‑WV) spoke exclu­sive­ly to the Was …