After having to back a man accused of being a child molester, who then lost to a Democrat in crimson-red Alabama, the Republican Party leadership is having agita because a rich former coal executive, Don Blankenship, might win the party’s primary in the West Virginia Senate race. Mr. Blankenship, you see, spent a year in prison on charges of conspiring to violate mine safety standards, after an inquiry into a mine collapse that killed 29 men.

One can see how these pols might be afraid they will be saddled with a convicted criminal as a Republican nominee. Mr. Blankenship has a lot of money to spend on the campaign, and is spending it, so he could beat his two mainstream opponents in the May 8 primary. In deeply conservative West Virginia, he’s attacked one opponent for being a former Democrat and another for his wife’s ties to Planned Parenthood. Party leaders fear that the broader electorate would be less forgiving of Mr. Blankenship and vote for the otherwise beatable Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin.

If that happens, it would be karma for the G.O.P.

One of the powerful cons that helped the party win the 2016 election was Donald Trump’s promise that he would restore coal miners’ jobs. Since coming to office, though, he has done little to increase employment in an increasingly mechanized industry losing the competition against cheaper natural gas.

But Mr. Trump has done a world of good for coal mine owners, like those of Massey Energy, the company Mr. Blankenship used to run, by gutting regulations on environmental protection and worker safety and health. Now a man with so little regard for regulation that he was convicted of violating federal mine safety standards might be the Republican standard-bearer in West Virginia — a state where miners, former miners, their relatives, friends and survivors make up much of the population.