Biden makes first in-person appeal to donors for '24 campaign

President Joe Biden lambasted "MAGA Republicans" and emphasized abortion rights in a pitch to more than 100 supporters and elected officials Friday, as part of the first in-person donor confab of his 2024 reelection campaign.

The reception, while not a fundraiser, was the first of a two-day meeting that offered Democratic Party officials the opportunity to sell donors on Biden’s reelection campaign strategy and begin an ambitious fundraising push aimed at topping the $1 billion the campaign raised last election cycle.

It also marked a new effort to bring untapped donors into the fold. Barring appearances at parties like state dinners or the occasional fundraiser for down-ballot races, donors have consistently said they were not being prioritized or the White House had failed to sufficiently bring them into the fold.

“Here’s the bottom line. It’s very simple: We need you. Our democracy needs you because this is about our freedoms,” Biden told the jubilant crowd.

But it’s unclear whether that energy has translated into material fundraising success — particularly when it comes to small-dollar donations. The campaign has not provided any clues about its early haul, as it did immediately after the launch in 2019. Back then, Biden faced a number of Democratic rivals, including many who released in real-time how much they had been raising for the campaign.

There’s a sensitivity in the campaign that the early number could feed a negative narrative, according to a donor involved in the campaign. Some major donors have not yet been asked to give, according to that person.

Biden did not become a fundraising juggernaut until he entered the general election and faced off against Donald Trump. While he bested the Democratic field over the first 24 hours, he struggled to keep pace with rivals like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who built large war chests on the strength of donors who signed up to regularly give small amounts. Biden’s standing greatly improved later in the primary process as rivals withdrew from the race amid poor showings and he consolidated their supporters.

A campaign official maintained that the 2024 fundraising operation was well-positioned this cycle, and the Democratic National Committee had brought in $276 million for the midterms, a record for a midterm cycle. The campaign had already made a two-week, seven-figure ad buy that was running in six battleground states.

The Friday night reception drew more than 100 Democratic donors and officials to the lavish Salamander hotel in D.C.’s Southwest Waterfront. Among the elected officials were Govs. Gavin Newsom of California, Wes Moore of Maryland, and Phil Murphy of New Jersey. The first Gen-Z congressman, 26-year-old Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), also attended, as did several of Biden’s newly announced campaign co-chairs, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major Democratic fundraiser and the only co-chair who is not an elected official.

As he left the White House on the gloomy Friday, a number of the members of Biden’s inner circle joined him en route, including counselor to the president, Steve Ricchetti, and senior advisor to the president, Mike Donilon.

Biden declined to mention former President Donald Trump by name in his remarks to the crowd. Instead, he lambasted “MAGA Republicans … trying to take us backwards.”

Attendees interviewed by POLITICO emphasized the energy in the room. Former Republican Rep. Jim Greenwood said the crowd gave Biden a standing ovation.

“I think everybody in the room was watching to see if he made a single gaffe,” he said. “He didn’t.”

Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator who bundled for Biden in 2020, said he thought most attendees seemed to believe that Trump would be the Republican nominee.

“He’s a motivating factor,” he said. “The two sort of high-profile people are him and DeSantis, and that’s Trump and Trump-lite.”

Christopher Cadelago contributed to this report.

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DeSantis allies go to war with an unlikely foe: Nikki Haley

For months, the presidential primary looked like the Ron DeSantis-Donald Trump show.

So it came as a surprise to some top Republicans this week when the well-funded super PAC supporting DeSantis turned its fire on Nikki Haley, a candidate still registering in the low-single digits in national polls.

Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis group, is now running an ad online attacking Haley, has polled Twitter users on a new nickname for her, and accused her in a tweet of “trying really hard to audition” to be Trump’s vice presidential pick.

The move suggested a shifting dynamic in the contest: With DeSantis falling further behind Trump in national and early-state surveys, his allied super PAC is trying to ensure that the primary remains a two-way race and that other candidates vying to be the Trump alternative do not gain traction.

“This is the DeSantis team acknowledging that he is closer to the field than he is to President Trump,” said Justin Clark, a Republican strategist who was Trump’s 2020 deputy campaign manager but who isn’t involved in a 2024 presidential campaign.

The pro-DeSantis PAC’s anti-Haley offensive came after the former South Carolina governor took a shot at DeSantis during an interview on Fox News for his heavy-handed approach toward Disney and suggested the theme park relocate several hours north to her home state. Shortly after, Never Back Down began running a digital ad featuring clips of Disney employees touting the company’s promotion of pro-LGBTQ themes, and concluding with a silhouette image of Haley holding hands with Mickey Mouse.

It wasn’t a one-off, but part of a coordinated offensive. The group announced the spot would be included in a “six-figure” digital ad buy in South Carolina, a key early primary state. And it put out several tweets attacking Haley, including one saying she is “embracing woke corporations” and another with a poll asking if she should be nicknamed “Mickey Haley” or “Nikki Mouse.”

“It's a bad strategy to defend Woke Disney when they decided to defend the sexualization of children,” Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for Never Back Down, said in a statement, when asked about the group’s recent attacks on Haley. ”It's mind-boggling [that] any Republican would side with a massive corporation that has an unprecedented level of self-governance over protecting children and families, but I guess 2023 is a strange time.”

DeSantis’ allies may have no other choice than to go on the attack. While Trump has been the consistent polling leader, it’s DeSantis who has been taking fire from a number of would-be rivals, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businessperson Vivek Ramaswamy and Haley.

A pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund Inc., (an abbreviation for “Stand For America”) regularly sends out news roundups to reporters highlighting unflattering coverage about DeSantis, something the group doesn’t do for Trump or Haley’s other primary rivals.

“Ron DeSantis' No Good, Very Bad Week,” read the subject of one such email. “DeSantis’ Disastrous Journey to the Swamp,” read another.

This week, the group created a video mocking DeSantis’ suggestion that he might open a state prison next to Disney World. And after her Fox interview about DeSantis, Haley joked that South Carolina conservatives are “not sanctimonious” about their values — a nod to Trump’s “DeSanctimonious” nickname for the Florida governor.

DeSantis is comfortably in second place in most surveys, trailing Trump but well ahead of the other Republicans in the field. But in recent weeks, he has lost ground, with Trump picking up endorsements from several Republican Congress members in Florida and with some major donors expressing reservations about the Florida governor. Two recent polls of South Carolina GOP voters showed Trump far ahead of the pack and Haley only narrowly behind DeSantis. A survey conducted earlier this month by National Public Affairs, a Republican firm co-founded by Clark, found DeSantis at 21 percent, with Haley at 19 percent. A Winthrop University poll taken several weeks earlier showed similar results, with DeSantis at 20 percent and Haley at 18 percent.

“The fact that Ron DeSantis is attacking her is not surprising,” said Mark Harris, a Republican consultant who is running the pro-Haley super PAC. “It’s a clear indication that he’s losing ground.”

Nachama Soloveichik, a spokesperson for Haley, also took a swipe at DeSantis, contending that as governor Haley would have “avoided wasting taxpayer dollars on tit for tat battles.”

The presence of Haley and others in the race presents a challenge for DeSantis, who must take steps to consolidate the support of voters who are looking for someone other than Trump. Any traction that rival candidates gain could detract from DeSantis’ effort to overtake the former president.

The dynamic bears some similarities to the 2016 primary, when Trump prevailed over a splintered field of Republican rivals. The non-Trump candidates spent months relentlessly attacking one another while largely leaving Trump untouched. It ultimately paved the way for Trump to win the nomination.

Because DeSantis is not yet an announced candidate, it has fallen on Never Back Down to take the lead in promoting him and attacking his prospective rivals. The organization — which has also aired ads attacking Trump — is expected to be among the most well-funded entities in the primary. It has announced that it has already raised $30 million, about two-thirds of which came from Nevada hotel executive Robert Bigelow.

Some Republicans, however, have privately questioned the decision to go after Haley, arguing that in taking on a lower-polling rival, DeSantis appeared weak.

“Attacking candidates with no votes does not have the upside of gaining votes,” said Curt Anderson, a veteran Republican strategist who is not involved in the primary.

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Hochul brings back an Albany tradition: The late, late budget

ALBANY, N.Y. — First came her futile attempt to win approval of a controversial judicial nominee. Now, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is leading a drawn out state budget process that’s irritated labor leaders, business interests and her fellow Democrats — and ushered in a new era of dysfunction in Albany.

Hochul on Thursday announced a conceptual agreement after a nearly monthlong delay that frustrated lawmakers, who felt little pressure to cave to her ultimatums, and deepened the divide between the moderate governor and the progressive-leaning Legislature.

Earlier in the day, even as the final pieces began to fall into place, Democrats were resigned to tempered optimism about a quick conclusion.

"Don't underestimate the ability for the governor to fuck this all up,” Brooklyn Assemblymember Bobby Carroll, a Democrat, said after briefly exiting closed-door discussions with colleagues.

The Democratic governor in her first year since being elected will emerge with a few wins, including agreements to change controversial bail laws, expand the number of charter schools in New York City and tie future minimum wage increases to inflation, pushing wages above $15 an hour starting next year.

“We're building a path of shared prosperity for all New Yorkers, and I'm very proud of this budget,” she told reporters Thursday evening.

But the victories will be undercut by the losses, especially the collapse of her sprawling housing plan that was a linchpin of her agenda. Hochul, by many accounts, is struggling to navigate the treacherous Albany landscape where her party has large legislative majorities but progressives and moderates are at constant war.

The delay in getting an on-time budget — long the symbol of dysfunction in Albany, where budgets were tardy 20 years in a row — left many lawmakers and special interests in dismay.

The housing plan Hochul traveled the state to sell was wholesale rejected. Hochul said she’d rather scrap it for now than implement the Legislature’s counterproposals, which she did not believe would create “meaningful change.”

She brushed off the defeat.

“I will never shy away from a fight. You're not always going to win,” she said Thursday. “But this state requires a leader who is not afraid to get knocked down once in a while because I always get back up. And I get back up even more committed to take on the challenges.”

Still, three longtime legislative aides independently described Hochul’s negotiating style as odd and inefficient, at least by the standards of Albany, where lawmaking often involves complex, multi-way agreements that tie together several unrelated issues. Hochul showed a reluctance to reshape her original ideas for compromise and a seeming lack of interest in tackling more than one issue at a time, said the aides, who were granted anonymity to discuss the private meetings.

First, she pressed legislative leaders for a deal on bail law changes, refusing to discuss other issues until she got an agreement. The maneuver scored her a victory, but delayed negotiations on some issues and blocked progress on others. Even items widely regarded as settled between the three parties often stayed “on the table” rather than closed, muddling final agreements, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

On housing, though, several parts of Hochul’s plan had supporters in the Legislature, and Democratic lawmakers, saying there was room for a compromise that could have been beneficial for both messaging and to get progress on the major issue in a state where affordability has driven out more residents than any place in the country.

If municipalities didn’t agree to build new housing through incentives and state aid, for example, the state could in future years toughen the laws through mandates that Hochul insisted upon, said Sen. Peter Harckham (D-Westchester County).

“I thought you start big and then you pull back as you negotiate,” he said. “So a bit of a lost opportunity.”

Hochul now walks away with no housing deal or movement toward Democrats’ shared pitch that they can make New York more affordable in the short term, whether that is through trying to lower costs or install new tenant protections. She insisted that, without mandating new housing, municipalities wouldn’t do it — as has been the case in other states. She knew it would be a challenge, she told reporters.

“It's not going to be easy. I didn't come here to do easy,” she said Thursday. “So there will be knockdowns. I'm just getting started. I've just begun my term as governor.”

Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) was in support of Hochul’s housing targets, even a component that would have allowed the state to override local zoning laws — a nonstarter in some New York City suburbs. She said exclusionary zoning in many parts of the state has resulted in de facto segregation that needs to be addressed.

But Salazar, who is the lead sponsor of another bill to provide greater tenant protections, said too much was left undone when Hochul dropped talks. “It's a shame, and it doesn't have to be this way. And more importantly, we can't afford to wait. The housing crisis isn't going away,” she added.

A few of the deals that emerged during the process were quickly criticized by some Democrats, with progressives decrying the minimum wage increase as insufficient to keep New York City competitive with other large cities, and a push for more charter schools as an affront to the public schools and the teachers unions she promised to support.

“Our relationship with the governor, I hope it will get back to what it was,” Andy Pallotta, the president of the New York State United Teachers union, said in an interview with POLITICO.

Some point to Hochul’s reliance on outside consultants to draft her initiatives — including some advisers based outside of Albany and the state of New York.

“There's just this disconnect. It's a mystery,” said one Democratic senator who was granted anonymity to discuss the governor and budget negotiations. “There is a lot of goodwill toward the governor, and there's just this hope that she and her team get on firmer footing.”

The housing plan demonstrated another theme — difficulty lining up coalitions of support prior to pushing a major issue, the same problem at the heart of Hochul’s failure to win confirmation in January of her chief judge pick. Lawmakers and special interest groups said they were miffed at the complexity of Hochul’s plan that landed on their desks in January and worried that unions, local leaders and builders weren’t already in conversations about it.

“It was doomed not just because of the substance of it, but the failure to involve all the stakeholders beforehand and trying to negotiate it with literally hundreds of other things in a 60-day period,” Long Island Assemblymember Fred Thiele, a Democrat, said of the housing plan.

Public pushes for most of her budget proposals came in the form of advertisements — backed primarily by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and a few others. A large coalition of civil rights and health advocates lined up to promote Hochul’s proposal to ban menthol cigarettes. But the ban is unlikely to be included in the final budget.

Hochul will be able to promote bail changes as one of her big wins. She said early on that she would have no qualms about holding up the budget in the name of her public safety initiatives.

“I said I'd make our state safer, more affordable, more livable for New Yorkers of today and tomorrow,” she said. “Now that we're reaching the end of this process, I'm confident that's exactly what this budget delivers.”

But the bail law tweaks won’t be enough to appease Republicans or other critics, and some criminal justice experts say the change is unlikely to have the positive effects she says it will.

“Her hope is that she can hang everything, even though it's window dressing, on some minimal discretion back to judges, which is what 49 other states already do,” Sen. James Tedisco (R-Schenectady County) said. “ I think that's where she'll plant the flag and say now we have victory, but it won't be a victory.”

Marie J. French contributed to this report.

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Iowa lawmakers applaud EPA for higher ethanol gas waiver

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New York set to ban gas furnaces, stoves in new buildings

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York will require new buildings to be zero-emissions starting in 2026 and make a state authority a major player in developing renewables as part of this year's budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced late Thursday.

The state’s budget will ban fossil fuel combustion in most new buildings under seven stories starting in 2026, with larger buildings covered in 2029. That means no propane heating and no gas furnaces or stoves in most new construction.

New York would be the first state to take this step through legislative action; California and Washington have done so through building codes.

“We’re going to be the first state in the nation to advance zero-emissions new homes and buildings,” Hochul said Thursday, announcing a conceptual deal on the budget that was due March 31.

The measure will help the state achieve its ambitious mandate to slash emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050 and was recommended in a plan approved in December by state agency heads and outside experts. Exemptions will be included for commercial kitchens, emergency generators and hospitals.

But some key details have not yet been finalized. Hochul also indicated she expects the deal to include rebates to consumers as part of a cap-and-trade initiative for emissions, but a detailed agreement hasn’t been reached on that issue.

There is no measure that eventually bans the replacement of gas furnaces in existing homes included in the budget, which Hochul had proposed and is recommended in the state’s climate plan. Lawmakers rejected that early on in negotiations. And none of the budget proposals included any measure targeting gas stoves in existing buildings.

Details of the agreement will be laid out in state budget bills that have not yet been printed. A potentially major caveat on grid reliability pushed by Assembly Democrats and a major gas utility also hasn’t been finalized, leading environmental advocates to moderate their enthusiasm until they see the final wording.

The Assembly initially proposed a requirement for the state’s Public Service Commission to review the ability of the electric system to support new buildings, although it was not clear how that would function because the requirements for reliable service already enshrined in state law.

“As the governor and legislative leadership continue to hammer out the details, they need to ensure that this is as strong as possible and there aren't any loopholes,” said Liz Moran, New York policy advocate for Earthjustice. “The technology is ready, and we absolutely have to be doing this to meet our climate law mandates.”

Advocates had pushed for an earlier implementation of the restrictions and pushed back on a later start for commercial buildings. Hochul had initially proposed a split at four stories for the timeline, but environmental groups and Senate Democrats backed seven stories to align with New York City’s zero-emission building law that passed in 2021.

The later date — starting Dec. 31, 2028 — is also expected to apply for commercial buildings and those over 100,000 square feet, Hochul spokesperson Katy Zielinski said.

A measure to end the “100 foot rule” subsidies for new gas hookups, as proposed by Senate Democrats, is not in the budget, Zielinski said. That means utilities will still pass on some costs of hooking up new customers, who they are legally required to serve, to other gas ratepayers.

The state budget will include a provision to allow for rebates to New York residents under a cap-and-trade program that is expected to be rolled out in 2025 and will raise gas prices at the pump and home heating fuel costs. Some additional details about how the funds could be spent may also be included but details are not finalized, according to the governor’s office.

“What we're doing is setting up a mechanism to be able to allow for rebates that we generate with a cap and invest program,” Hochul said. “We think that is the important first step, because we couldn't do it under existing law.”

Some environmental advocates had pressed for the Legislature to play more of a role in the parameters of that program, which is expected to be rolled out through regulations by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. It will help the state achieve the emissions reductions required under the 2019 climate law, but Hochul has raised concerns about the costs of the program and sought to rewrite the law to reduce the emissions captured by the measure.

“We’re focusing on aggressive climate protections but we have to make sure that they're affordable for New Yorkers or it won't work,” she said.

Hochul also said that a measure to allow the New York Power Authority to build new renewables was included in the deal. The measure will include labor standards, allow but not require NYPA to work with the private sector on renewable projects and includes the “renewable energy access and community help” program for NYPA to provide bill credits to low-income residents to reduce their utility costs, according to the governor’s office.

Assemblymember Ken Zebrowski (D-Rockland County) said the details of the NYPA measure are among the open issues: “Hopefully there is a full agreement soon and everything can go to print, but those details aren’t all worked out yet."

Hochul also announced the Environmental Protection Fund would be kept at $400 million; $500 million in additional funding would go to water infrastructure.

Lawmakers have also agreed to Hochul’s proposal of $200 million for utility bill relief and $200 million for a NYSERDA program to weatherize and electrify the homes of some low-income New Yorkers.

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Government report shows steep decline in FBI’s ‘backdoor searches’ on Americans

The Biden administration has a new argument in its uphill battle to sell Congress on renewing a controversial electronic surveillance statute: it can rein in abuses of the program itself.

The number of times FBI personnel sought information on Americans within a repository of data collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act fell more than 95 percent in 2022 from 2021, according to a much anticipated transparency report on U.S. spying released Friday.

The decline follows a series of reforms the FBI instituted in the summer of 2021 to curtail searches of the database for information on Americans who correspond with surveilled foreigners.

At the heart of the battle: Section 702 is a powerful spying program that allows the intelligence community to snoop on the emails and other digital communications of foreigners located abroad. But the FBI does not need a warrant to search communications that have already been collected under the statute — and its growing use, and misuse, of those powers to snoop on Americans in recent years have made lawmakers reticent about reupping the program as is.

Showing restraint: The substantial decline documented within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s 2023 Annual Statistical Transparency Report buttresses the administration’s claims that it has managed to rein in FBI searches on Americans, a senior FBI official told reporters ahead of the report’s release.

The report “aptly illustrates how built-in oversight that Congress put in the statute works to … repair trust and transparency,” said the official, who provided the briefing to reporters on condition of anonymity.

The data: The FBI sifted through — or “queried” in intelligence community parlance — the 702 database for details on Americans roughly 120,000 times last year after conducting nearly 3 million such searches in 2021 and 850,000 thousand searches in 2020, the report says.

The bureau conducted those 120,000 searches due to alleged connections to foreign spies and security threats.

The bureau also has the ability to scour through the database for details on purely domestic crimes — another hot-button issue that has surfaced amid the reauthorization debate. But the FBI made only 16 such searches last year and 14 the year prior, according to the report.

Zooming out: The new report is the first to disclose the impact of a series of fixes the intelligence community implemented in 2021 after a secret intelligence court overseeing the program determined in rulings from 2021 and 2020 that the bureau committed “apparent widespread violations of the querying standard.”

The reforms amounted to a series of internal measures to discourage bureau personnel from improperly probing the database, like requiring agents to affirmatively opt-in to 702 searches and setting an upper limit on the number of terms that could be used at a time.

Falling on deaf ears: But the new data doesn't appear to be getting traction with lawmakers who believe the spying program should not be reauthorized absent new safeguards for the federal law enforcement agency.

"While there was a sharp decline in U.S. person queries from December 2021 to November 2022, it is incumbent upon Congress, not the Executive Branch, to codify reforms to FISA Section 702," Reps. Mike Turner (R-Oh.) and Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) said in a statement upon the report's release.

“Today’s report highlights the urgent need for reforms to government surveillance programs in order to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans," added Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a longtime privacy advocate, in a statement.

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Think Manchin has coal connections? Meet his rival.

West Virginia voters may swap one coal boss for an even bigger one.

Republican Gov. Jim Justice jumped into the race Thursday to challenge Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, setting up a potential collision between two politicians with deep connections to the state’s coal industry.

Justice, who was included on Forbes' billionaires list as recently as 2020, has profited from family businesses in the fossil fuel industry across Appalachia. Recent polling shows he is the strongest candidate vying for the Republican nomination to challenge Manchin.

His entrance catapults the race into one of the highest-profile political battles of 2024, with the possibility of showcasing both men’s personal ties to an energy industry that President Joe Biden and other world leaders have promised to largely replace with renewable power.

Manchin, perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Democrat, confounded members of his party by stalling major legislation aimed at reducing fossil fuel use. But by ultimately voting for the Inflation Reduction Act, which pours hundreds of billions of dollars into clean energy, he risks losing support among voters with ties to coal.

Both men have earned millions from their families’ fossil fuel businesses.

Over the years, Justice’s family coal businesses have collected millions of dollars in state and federal fines for pollution and public safety violations. The businesses have a long history of ignoring those fines or paying them after years of protracted legal efforts.

Manchin’s political position has benefited his business interests, which include a family company that trucks discarded coal to a high-emitting power plant near his hometown. The facility is the only plant in West Virginia that still uses waste coal to generate electricity.

Accusations around conflicts of interest have followed Justice, 72, and Manchin, 75, through much of their careers. But that has not slowed their political rise in West Virginia, said Rob Cornelius, the former chair of the Wood County Republican Executive Committee and a critic of Justice, whom he described as “Teflon as hell.”

“We expect our leaders to be a little dirty, I guess is the nice way of putting it,” Cornelius said. “No one here cares about what I would call government and business corruption, and that’s probably an indictment of our voters.”

A spokesperson for Justice did not respond to requests for comment.

Manchin has said he will not make a decision about his political future until the end of the year. That could include running for reelection, launching an independent bid for president or retiring. Manchin has been increasingly critical of the Biden administration and his fellow Democrats in recent months, particularly over energy issues.

“Senator Manchin continues to consider the best way he can serve his state and country," Sam Runyon, a Manchin spokesperson, said in a statement. "But make no mistake, he will win whatever race he enters.”

West Virginia remains almost entirely reliant on coal for its power, even as other states move toward cheaper renewables and natural gas. The state gets 90 percent of its power from coal, compared with about 20 percent nationally (Greenwire, Jan. 26). In recent months, Justice has fought to keep the state’s largest coal-fired power plant from closing — a move that could cost ratepayers more than $30 million in additional monthly costs.

Justice’s financial disclosures show that his family’s sprawling business empire extends to more than a hundred businesses, including in energy, hospitality, health care, resorts and timber. Justice’s family owns dozens of coal-related businesses based in West Virginia, Virginia and Alabama and elsewhere, his financial disclosures show.

Those companies, many of which operate mines, have faced millions of dollars in fines for air pollution and unsafe working conditions. They have missed numerous deadlines to pay those fines after being sued by the U.S. attorney’s office and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Justice has also faced liabilities related to land reclamation on the surface mines owned by his companies. At one time, the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy estimated that the companies had about $200 million in such liabilities.

Recently, the Bluestone Coke facility in Alabama, which is owned by Justice’s family, had to pay a fine of almost $1 million for releasing an excessive amount of toxic air pollution that affected a Black neighborhood for years, a ProPublica investigation revealed. The Birmingham facility repeatedly ignored public health concerns, resulting in the largest fine being proposed in the history of the Jefferson County Board of Health.

Justice’s family is considering a sale of Bluestone, The Wall Street Journal reported last month.

In 2009, Justice bought the 6,500-acre Greenbrier luxury resort in White Sulphur Springs, and then built a casino underneath it. The resort was home to a secret congressional bunker that has since been decommissioned. It is also the site of his planned remarks Thursday evening in which he is expected to officially announce his candidacy.

The personal ties that Justice and Manchin have to the coal industry may raise questions in such a high-profile race, but that is “not new information for people in West Virginia,” said Conrad Lucas, a former chair of the West Virginia Republican Party.

He said voters have looked at those entanglements and repeatedly elected both men.

Justice, despite his wealth, has cultivated the image of someone who is approachable to the average West Virginian, Lucas said, “despite him being a figure who owns the Greenbrier.”

“He has an ability to connect with voters that you wouldn’t think an incredibly wealthy person would, but voters have found him incredibly relatable,” Lucas said.

Justice is one of the most popular governors in the country. A Morning Consult poll conducted in January found that Justice was the fifth-most-liked governor, with a 64 percent approval rating.

Justice leads Manchin 52 percent to 42 percent among likely voters, according to a poll from the Senate Leadership Fund, the super political action committee aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). The only other declared candidate in the race, Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.), trails Manchin by 15 percentage points, the poll showed.

West Virginia is among the reddest states in the country. Former President Donald Trump, who could once again be at the top of the ticket, won the state by almost 40 percentage points in 2020. The Senate race, and especially the Republican primary, are widely expected to be the most expensive in state history. A poll released earlier this month by National Public Affairs showed Justice outpacing Mooney by 31 points.

Mooney “looks forward to a robust debate of the issues important to all West Virginians including Justice’s record,” his campaign manager, John Findlay, said in a statement before the governor entered the race.

If he wins, Justice would arrive in Washington not as a power broker, as Manchin has been in the closely divided Senate, but as a backbench Republican. His personal wealth and potential for raising campaign contributions could elevate his standing within the Republican Party, but he wouldn’t be the decisive vote on major legislation.

But there are similarities between Justice and Manchin that go beyond making money on coal. Manchin’s close friend and former chief of staff, Larry Puccio, has worked for both men’s campaigns.

At the federal level, Puccio has leveraged his friendship with Manchin to receive lucrative lobbying contracts, as POLITICO’s E&E News has reported. In Charleston, Puccio works as a lobbyist for multiple businesses owned by Justice, including the Greenbrier and Bluestone. Puccio has also worked as chair of Justice’s transition team — as he did for Manchin.

Justice’s extensive business holdings won’t necessarily make him stand out in Congress, said Craig Holman, who lobbies on ethics and campaign finance issues for Public Citizen, the progressive consumer rights group founded by Ralph Nader.

“Lawmakers here in Congress do have very strong conflicts of interest and business interests, and they’re not expected to recuse themselves from votes that affect those interests,” he said. “And it is a conflict of interest, an obvious one, and it’s rather prevalent throughout Congress and not really subject to regulation.”

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