Democrats scented midterm success by focusing on local issues in a state Trump won by 42 points but a supreme court confirmation tossed a new element into the campaign

Laura Finch thought the Democrats had a good shot at taking back control of the West Virginia legislature, and of winning her own contest for a seat in the state senate, if the party could just keep voters talking about their own daily struggles.

The politics of the recent West Virginia teachers’ strike, which sparked a wave of similar protests that shut schools across the country earlier this year, played to the Democrats’ agenda on low pay, inequality and how struggling schools perpetuate poverty.

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The Democratic US senator, Joe Manchin, was running an effective campaign focused on his Republican rival’s opposition to Obamacare in a state reliant on government-funded healthcare. A former army officer who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and then broke with him, Richard Ojeda, was threatening an upset victory in a congressional race with an energetic brand of populist politics in a district the president won by a huge margin.

Republican operatives scoffed at the idea but Democrats calculated that in November they might just squeeze enough victories to once again control a state legislature they had dominated for seven decades until a GOP sweep four years ago in the middle of former president Barack Obama’s second term.

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The key was to keep voters talking about West Virginia and not Washington. Campaign on local issues, not Trump, who won this state by 42 points, a wider margin than any other.

Then came Brett Kavanaugh and his bitter nomination to the supreme court against a wave of accusations of sexual misconduct and excessive drinking.

“It’s astonishing to me the number of people who I’ve come into contact with in the last couple of weeks who have used the fight over Kavanaugh to frame their own opposition to liberal elites,” said Finch.

“They feel that it was unfair that Kavanaugh was treated supposedly the way that he was and they see it as picking on the president … It’s allowed the Republicans to get back to a simplistic us and them message,” she added.

Phalen Kuckuck, director of the West Virginia Republican Legislative Committee organising the party’s state campaign, agreed that is exactly what the vitriolic fight over Kavanaugh has permitted the GOP to do.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A supporter waits in line to enter a rally for Donald Trump outside the WesBanco Arena on 29 September in Wheeling, West Virginia. Photograph: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

“It did help a lot. It refocused the campaign and gave us a quick one-liner, a really succinct way to tell our voters: ‘Look, these people were against Kavanaugh, they were against the president’s justice. You need to turn out a vote against the party that held this up. There were crazy mob protests around it. And that’s not our values. You need to turn out and vote against that kind of thing,’” he said.

Kuckuck, who voted for Obama in 2012 but moved to the Republicans because he regards them as more fiscally responsible, agreed the opposition to Kavanaugh was widely perceived in West Virginia as being really directed at Trump.

“People see that as an attack on him, his administration and his agenda – and more broadly their values because that’s who they support. They took that as quite an affront,” he said. “It really enthused our base. Maybe some of them only vote in presidential elections and don’t typically turn out in a midterm. They’re definitely going to vote this year.”

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The most significant impact may be on Manchin’s fight to hold on to a crucial Democratic seat in the US Senate. Manchin had a comfortable lead, averaging about eight points, over the state’s Republican attorney general, Patrick Morrissey, by focusing attacks on his opponent’s legal action against Obamacare when so many West Virginians rely on government health benefits from the poor to the retired. Morrissey is also vulnerable over his past ties to big pharma, and his wife’s work for a major drug distributor, in the state worst hit by the opioid epidemic.

Then Manchin hesitated over Kavanaugh. The senator appeared fearful of opposing Trump’s choice because it would alienate large numbers of swing voters in the socially conservative state. But he also wanted to avoid being the deciding vote in securing the controversial nominee a seat on the supreme court because it would rile Democratic activists.

Manchin was saved by the Maine senator Susan Collins giving the president his victory. It allowed the West Virginia senator to declare in favor of the new supreme court justice and deprived the Republicans of a stick to beat him. Finch concedes that it was the politically savvy thing for Manchin to do but said it still exposed him.

“It shows that he’s rather spineless, to put it bluntly, and will just do whatever is best for him politically to get re-elected,” said Kuckuck.

Finch agrees that Manchin’s lack of a firm stand damaged him with Democrats and some swing voters.

“I’m afraid that he did it based on a poll and we want to do things based on our convictions,” she said. “It has weakened Democrats because so many of the Democrats I know who are activists are so displeased with Manchin’s vote that they don’t want to vote for him. They may grit their teeth and do it but he’s not going to be supported the way that they might otherwise have had he not supported Kavanaugh’s nomination.”

A poll for the Republican party taken the day after the Kavanaugh vote shows Manchin’s lead cut to within the margin of error.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Richard Ojeda, an army veteran and Democratic candidate for the US Congress, meets with campaign volunteers in Charleston, West Virginia. Photograph: Jeff Swensen/The Guardian

Ojeda, a state senator running for the US Congress, stands a better chance than most Democrats at winning back the president’s supporters. The latest polls put the retired army officer, who was wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq, slightly ahead of his GOP rival following an energetic campaign focused on poverty and inequality.

But even he treads carefully on Trump and Kavanaugh. At a campaign debate with candidates for state and federal office in Summersville on Friday, he made a point of praising the president.

“I did support Donald Trump and Donald Trump has done a great job in terms of the coal because right now, where I’m from in West Virginia, the coalminers are working and the trains are moving and they’ve got coal on them. But I’m not happy with everything that I see,” he said.

Later, Ojeda sidestepped a question from the audience about Kavanaugh by saying that he did not have all the facts. He also responded to a question hostile to the national Democratic leadership in Congress by keeping his distance. He described Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House of Representatives, as “not good for the Democratic party”.

Following the debate, Ojeda told the Guardian that Kavanaugh rarely comes up on the campaign trail and he did not think it would have much impact on his race. He said that on the doorstep he was hearing much more about the opioid epidemic, and lack of jobs forcing young people to leave the state.

“We have prosperity on the east and west coasts of America and we have poverty in middle America and Appalachia and it seems like nobody is bringing that up,” he said. “The Republicans don’t care about the workers, they don’t care about safety, they don’t care about the environment.”

He said he thinks the Democratic vote will hold up.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd at a rally at the Civic Center in Charleston, West Virginia, on 21 August. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters

Still, for all their hope of reversing the trend toward the GOP, there are signs the Democrats are still in retreat. Finch was disturbed to discover that large numbers of voters in her home county of Pocahontas have been shifting their party registration from Democrat to Republican or independent.

“It seems to indicate that people were embarrassed to be Democrats,” she said.

The shift in party registration has been seen across the state for several years but has accelerated with Trump’s election.

Bo Copley, an unemployed mineworker when he made national news by confronting Hillary Clinton over her hostility to coalmining as she campaigned for president in West Virginia, thinks that all the Kavanaugh fight did is solidify existing positions.

Copley, a self-described “ultra-conservative” who ran for the GOP nomination won by Morrissey and placed fifth in the primary, has a job once again, as a warehouse tech on a coalmine. He said that in his part of southern West Virginia voters had already made up their minds based on the president’s promises.

“The mines are hiring again. We went several years where we didn’t have the nuisance of following 18-wheelers full of coal. We didn’t get stopped by coal trains. Now we’re happy to put up with that once again,” he said. “The president is delivering. We see it every day. We see it on the ground.”