Weekly West Virginia “Battle Royale” Senate Primary Update

Ties to Saudi Arabia, an ongoing scandal over health issues and attacks over Trump loyalty: here’s what you might have missed last week in West Virginia’s “messy,” “costly,” and “bruising”  GOP primary.

• While the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tournament was held over the weekend at Jim Justice’s resort, multiple outlets reported on how the event highlights Justice’s “controversial business ties to an authoritarian country,” how he “cozies” up to and “directly profit[s]” off Saudi Arabia and how he has “courted the Saudi-backed venture and has called the kingdom a key ally,” “raising ethical concerns about … a conflict of interest” if elected to the U.S. Senate. 

• Sen. Rand Paul Attacks Justice’s health. Sen. Rand Paul, who is backing Mooney, “is raising concerns” over Justice’s “well-documented [health] issues,” saying “the governor has got a lot of health issues and is not very mobile. There’s a question of how he’ll be able to serve given his health.” This comes after previous reporting detailing “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.”

• Jim Justice and Alex Mooney continued to “spar over who backs Trump most.” Mooney called himself “the only pro-Trump conservative in the race” who has “been a proud supporter of [Trump] since DAY ONE” and “dinged” Justice as a “liberal … who celebrated Biden’s victory in 2020.”

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