Republicans say the two-term senator’s centrist concessions ‘betrayed’ state voters, while Democrats claim he profited while leaving ‘a lot of people behind.’
FARMINGTON, W.V.—The sumac and sugar maples have lost their flaming red leaves and the hardwood forests marching up West Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains are bare and gray the week after Thanksgiving.
In Farmington, where Little Lauren Run meets Buffalo Creek, the half-square-mile town of about 400 residents is preparing for the holidays. Candy canes line Main Street and a Christmas tree stands near a fire ring at City Hall. Buck hunting season is ending, and the state championship football game—pitting two local high schools—is days away.
Otherwise, it’s a quiet weekday afternoon under an ambivalent Appalachian sun. There are no cars in the Family Dollar Store parking lot. The post office, Bank of Farmington, Cut’n Loose hair salon, and Bakers Nook are open and mostly empty.
This is Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.V.) hometown. It’s where his grandfather owned a grocery store, his father built a furniture business, and where his family produced two mayors and a secretary of state who helped John F. Kennedy take the state and win the presidency in 1960.
It’s where in the mid-1960s, teenage quarterback Joe Manchin III made a name for himself by following in the footsteps of NFL Hall of Famer Sam Huff, his hometown idol, to play football for West Virginia University.
He’d never play a snap for the Mountaineers after a freshman knee injury, but the future governor and two-term U.S. senator became a household name across the state and country nevertheless.
In Farmington, however, ask locals about “Mr. Manchin,” and U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin isn’t who they think of first, despite road signs touting it as the hometown of the senator.
Across Marion County, the senator is known as the brother of Dr. John Manchin Jr., who has operated Farmington’s Manchin Clinic since 1979; the first cousin of Tim Manchin, whose Manchin Injury Law Group in nearby Fairmont, West Virginia, is featured prominently on roadside billboards; and the father of Joe Manchin IV, who runs Enersystems, which sells gob—a waste coal, rock, and clay mix—to Grant Town’s power plant.
By John Haughey
