HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — Don Blankenship walked into the Guyan Golf & Country Club on Tuesday afternoon and bluntly laid out his plan for the final two-week stretch of the GOP Senate primary: a relentless slash-and-burn campaign targeting Mitch McConnell.

As the assembled local GOP women’s group munched on chocolate chip cookies, the coal baron who spent a year behind bars after a deadly 2010 mine explosion compared his current battle against the McConnell-led Republican establishment to his past legal fight against the federal government.


“When you’ve been falsely charged, when you’ve had seven of 10 bill of rights flagrantly violated, you tend to fight back. … I make no apologies for that,” he said, adding that when he sees people like McConnell “leading us to the left, I will speak out about it, because I know bad people join good organizations.”

As the dramatic May 8 primary campaign hurtles to a close, it’s taking on an all-too familiar outline. For the second time in a matter of months, an insurgent outsider is taking aim at McConnell, looking to capitalize on the broiling anti-establishment unrest that’s dominating Republican politics. And just like last time, McConnell is fighting back.

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In the fall, the leader’s aggressive campaign to defeat Alabama Republican Roy Moore backfired spectacularly. This time, his attempt to stop the 68-year-old Blankenship seems to be faring better. Amid an avalanche of attacks from a McConnell-aligned super PAC, two new polls out this week show Blankenship, once seen as an early front-runner, plunging into third place.

Crisscrossing the state this week, Blankenship savaged the Kentucky Republican as weak-kneed, accused him of failing to stand up for the coal industry, and said he’d long ago lost touch with Republican voters. Blankenship vowed to oppose McConnell as Senate GOP leader if he won and began airing a TV ad — which he personally composed — envisioning McConnell as a bog-enveloped “swamp captain.”

At times, the attacks grew intensely personal. During an interview with POLITICO on Sunday, Blankenship said McConnell “has a lot of connections in China,” adding that the GOP leader’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, is “from China, so we have to be really concerned that we are in truth” putting America’s interests first. Blankenship’s girlfriend was born in China.

During an appearance on a local radio show the following day, Blankenship repeated the jab, describing Chao’s father as a “wealthy Chinaperson,” who was “well-connected in China.”

Asked about the remarks, Josh Holmes, a longtime McConnell political adviser, charged that Blankenship is “mentally ill,” noting that Blankenship had once spoken of moving to China and becoming a Chinese citizen. Holmes also said Blankenship had used a “racial blast” against the Taiwan-born Chao, whom he described as “the dictionary definition of the American dream.”

“The one consistency we've seen over the last decade is that the death rattle of a primary candidate is always a tendency to attack other Republicans because they know reporters will report it,” Holmes added. “At this point what's clear is that voters are writing him off and so he knows that by attacking McConnell he'll get attention.”

Driving the McConnell team’s offensive is a belief that Blankenship cannot defeat Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in November.

This spring, Steven Law, president of the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, wrote a memo to top Republican Party donors that stated Manchin was beatable — but not if Blankenship wins the primary.

“We would forfeit any chance of beating Manchin if Blankenship becomes the nominee,” wrote Law, underlining the sentence for emphasis.

Republican strategists spent weeks deliberating how to take down Blankenship, concerned that an overtly Washington-led effort would only strengthen him – just as it did when Senate Leadership Fund spent millions of dollars against Moore.

Finally, a group of Republican strategists who’ve previously worked with Senate Leadership Fund mobilized and earlier this month launched the generically-titled Mountain Families PAC. Over the span of a little more than a week, the super PAC pummeled Blankenship with over $700,000 in TV ads accusing him of contaminating drinking water with coal slurry.

The creative force behind the commercials was a GOP consulting firm spearheaded by Larry McCarthy, a McConnell ally who is widely viewed as the master of the political attack ad. Among his credits: the 1988 Willie Horton spot that helped to sink Democrat Michael Dukakis’ presidential bid.

Apparently not finished with Blankenship, Mountain Families PAC on Thursday began purchasing additional commercial airtime.

With Blankenship cratering in polls, many Republicans are convinced that Blankenship has been effectively neutralized and that the contest has emerged as a two-person race between GOP Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. The coal baron has derided both as pawns of the establishment.

As he hit the trail this week, Blankenship bristled over the effort to upend his candidacy. Each time, he pointed to the super PAC’s connection to the GOP leader.

“As you know,” he said at the GOP women’s luncheon in Huntington, “I’ve even been beat up by the Republican Mitch McConnell.”

During a news conference on Monday afternoon, Blankenship fired back at Washington Republicans who called him unelectable, saying even his dog could beat Manchin.

At one point, he was asked point-blank whether he had a message for McConnell.

“He needs to understand that if I'm there I will not vote for him for majority leader, and so the rest of the senators should understand that they should not put him up if they need my vote,” Blankenship responded.

In an interview, Blankenship recounted a personal history with McConnell, a fellow coal country pol, that he said dated back nearly three decades. He said he first met McConnell during the late 1980s while visiting the home of a GOP donor in Kentucky, and that their paths occasionally crossed over the years after. The coal company that Blankenship formerly presided over, Massey Energy, has mines in Kentucky.

Massey, Blankenship said, had been helpful to McConnell early in his political career. In 1999, Blankenship, a longtime GOP donor who for years bankrolled West Virginia campaigns, contributed $1,000 to McConnell’s reelection campaign, according to federal filings.

Over time, though, Blankenship said he came to see the Republican leader as insufficiently supportive of the mining industry. He said they haven’t spoken in about a decade.

“I never felt that he fought very hard for coal. He seemed to be too willing to compromise on climate change legislation,” said Blankenship, adding that West Virginians felt that McConnell didn’t put up enough of a fight against President Barack Obama’s push to regulate carbon emissions.

McConnell advisers dispute the criticism. “People have accused Mitch McConnell of a lot of things over the years, but I’ve never heard anyone say he’s insufficiently pro-coal,” said Holmes.

After being released from prison last year, Blankenship launched his campaign with an eye toward clearing his name and pushing back against the allegations the federal government leveled against him. As the race has progressed, he has come to see his war with McConnell as intertwined with the central theme of his candidacy: that the Washington establishment is out to get him.

At Blankenship campaign events, he hands out copies of “An American Political Prisoner,” the manifesto he wrote while in jail.

The anti-McConnell campaign has a decidedly homemade flavor. Blankenship, who’s staffed his campaign with West Virginia-based operatives rather than ones from Washington, personally wrote the “swamp captain” ad, an amateur-style spot that lacks the slick production of typical political commercials. After producing the concept and the script, his small group of advisers made some edits before releasing it to TV stations.

But as the race enters its final days, Blankenship finds himself playing catch-up against his more establishment-friendly rivals.

During his closing remarks in a Tuesday afternoon debate, he chose to go after one of his opponents with a familiar weapon.

“Will Evan Jenkins stand up when Mitch McConnell looks at him?” Blankenship asked as the congressman looked on. “That’s the question.”

