In his bid for a U.S. Senate seat in West Virginia, Don Blankenship has started selling himself by claiming to be “Trumpier than Trump.” It’s hard to dispute his boast. President Donald Trump has merely bankrupted six companies, while Blankenship’s negligence as the CEO of Massey Energy led to the death of 29 miners in a 2010 accident, which also resulted in Blankenship serving a one-year prison term for willfully violating safety standards.

Trump’s demagogic and xenophobic rhetoric, as well as his willingness to thumb his nose at the Republican establishment, are more than matched by Blankenship. In an ad last week, Blankenship referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as “cocaine Mitch” and made a racist dig at McConnell’s Chinese-American wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. “Swamp captain Mitch McConnell has created millions of jobs for China people,” Blankenship said in the ad. “While doing so, Mitch has gotten rich. In fact, his China family has given him tens of millions of dollars.”

Blankenship has taken the Trumpian ethos to such an extreme that even Trump is blanching. On Monday morning, he tweeted:

To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State...No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 7, 2018

Trump’s tweet was motivated by the anxiety of the Republican establishment, led by McConnell, that Blankenship might actually win the party’s nomination in Tuesday’s primary. Polls over the weekend show a tight race, with Blankenship enjoying a narrow edge over Jenkins and Morrisey.

The race fits a familiar pattern of the Trump era, in which incendiary insurgents who are opposed by the Republican establishment do unexpectedly well. That describes Trump himself, as well as Roy Moore, who won the Republican nomination for Senate in Alabama last year despite a history of dabbling with white supremacism and his belief that homosexuality should be illegal. Moore, of course, proved too extreme for voters, hobbled not just by his far-right politics but by credible allegations that he was a child molester.