Trump to campaign for Morrisey in West Virginia

President Trump is slated to hold a rally in West Virginia to stump for state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R), who’s running for Senate in a state that Trump overwhelmingly won in 2016.

Trump is set to appear at the Charleston Civic Center in Charleston, W.Va., at 7 p.m. on Aug. 21. The president’s reelection campaign noted that this is Trump’s third rally in the Mountain State since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015.

Trump is looking to boost Morrisey, who is challenging Sen. Joe Manchin (D) in a race that’s expected to help decide which party controls the Senate. Trump won West Virginia by nearly 42 points in the 2016 presidential election.

The Senate race is rated as a “toss up” by The Cook Political Report.

{mosads}

“President Trump loves the people of West Virginia and looks forward to celebrating with them our booming economy that’s delivering record job growth and rising incomes to hardworking West Virginia families,” said Michael Glassner, chief operating officer for Trump’s reelection campaign.

“The President will also use the rally to remind voters what’s at stake in the midterm elections this fall, and encourage all West Virginians to get out and vote for Patrick Morrisey in his race to defeat Joe Manchin for the Senate and help protect and expand our GOP majorities in the House and Senate.”

Morrisey and Manchin are locked in a tight battle for Senate. Despite West Virginia’s strong lean toward Republicans, the RealClearPolitics polling average has Manchin leading by 7 points.

Manchin has had a closer working relationship with the president compared to most other Democrats, but Trump has also criticized the senator for voting against the GOP’s tax bill.

On Friday, Morrisey welcomed the support from Trump on the campaign trail.

“Trump and West Virginians know that liberal Joe Manchin has failed our state on the issues that matter most by pushing for gun control, funding Planned Parenthood, and supporting Hillary Clinton’s coal-killing campaign,” the state attorney general said in a statement.

Trump is stepping up his involvement on the campaign trail, mainly holding rallies in states where he won big and that also hold marquee Senate races. Republicans are clinging to a two-seat majority in the upper chamber, but they face a favorable Senate map where Democrats are defending incumbents in 10 states that the president won in 2016.

Trump has said that he plans to kick it into high gear in the last two months before the 2018 midterm elections. Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in a recent interview that he’ll start to hit the trail “six or seven days a week” about 60 days out from the November elections.

Trump’s most recent campaign appearance was to stump for Republican state Sen. Troy Balderson in Ohio’s hotly contested special House election on Tuesday. Balderson leads Democratic opponent Danny O’Connor by a razor-thin margin, but the election outcome has yet to be determined as Ohio counts provisional ballots.

Updated at 12:58 p.m.