Weekly West Virginia “Battle Royale” Senate Primary Update

Federal investigations, scrutiny around Justice’s health, Justice failing to give coal miners the health benefits they’re owed, and attempts to cover up a barrage of financial scandals, here’s what you might have missed this week in West Virginia’s “messy,” “costly,” and “bruising intraparty fight:” 

• Jim Justice defended the “Do It For Babydog” vaccine lottery sweepstakes after federal investigators subpoenaed his office, and Mooney was quick to attack him as an “out-of-control spend[er]” over the allegation that “Justice wasted a tremendous amount of money on a lottery that did little to improve the state’s vaccine rates.”
  

• Justice’s health is facing renewed scrutiny. New reporting from The Intelligencer detailed that Jim Justice underwent gallbladder surgery this week, renewing “concerns” over the “string of health issues” that “have hounded Justice ever since he first took office” and “caused rumors to spread among lawmakers and others in the Capitol … that the governor would resign.”

• Mooney called Justice a “phony” this week while citing recent reporting that Justice coal companies were found liable for “years of unpaid premiums under a union retiree health benefit plan” — “the latest in a long history” of Justice’s financial scandals. This is the latest in a long line of name-calling by Mooney, including calling Justice a “puppet,” “deadbeat” and “swamp establishment RINO.”
  

• Justice is “seeking to limit” data in a federal legal proceeding, “pushing off” his campaign’s financial disclosure reports, and “urging media” to stop focusing on his businesses. New reporting from The Weirton Daily Times highlighted that as West Virginia Republicans’ primary continues to escalate, “Justice has become increasingly defensive and protective” over his financial scandals. 

###