Q&A: What a Joe Manchin Presidential Run Could Mean for the 2024 Election—and the Climate

From our collaborating partner “Living on Earth,” public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by producer Paloma Beltran and managing producer Jenni Doering with Phil McKenna of Inside Climate News. It has been edited for length and clarity. 

There’s a lot of focus on New Hampshire as voters head to the polls to vote in the primary on Jan. 23. The purple state has long played a key role during the primaries as well as in the general election; even though it doesn’t offer that many electoral votes, sometimes a handful makes all the difference.

This has played out over the years, including in 2000, when George W. Bush ran against Al Gore and there were ballot recounts and “hanging chads” in Florida. But they wouldn’t have even mattered if there had been a different outcome in New Hampshire, with its four electoral votes. Bush led Gore in the state by only 7,000 votes—but 22,000 New Hampshire voters chose the third-party candidate, Ralph Nader of the Green Party.

Many have speculated that if Nader hadn’t run and Gore had picked up just some of those ballots in New Hampshire, Al Gore would have had 270 electoral votes, just enough to win. In our two-party dominated system, it’s easy to forget about how much of an effect third parties can have.

And it could happen again, if West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin decides to jump in the presidential race this year as an independent.

Inside Climate News reporter Phil McKenna has been on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, this time following Joe Manchin. 

PHIL McKENNA: This week I was at a “Politics and Eggs” breakfast hosted by the New England Council near Manchester, part of a “listening tour” Manchin is doing to explore a possible third-party presidential campaign.

PALOMA BELTRAN: “Politics and Eggs” sounds appetizing, if you have the stomach for politics! What was the mood there?

McKENNA: This event had a lot of corporate sponsors, including TC Energy, one of the largest oil and gas pipeline companies in North America, and Dominion Energy, a large electric utility company. And it was a pretty friendly crowd with a couple hundred people there. One big question on people’s minds was—is he gonna run?

JENNI DOERING: With primary season underway, the clock is ticking. You mentioned energy companies partly sponsored the event, how much did climate factor in?

McKENNA: Well, there was one person, a retiree not from the corporate sector, who raised the issue of climate change. Roger Stephenson spent his career with the Union of Concerned Scientists and the League of Conservation Voters.

ROGER STEPHENSON: One thing you did say is you would wage an unrelenting fight against the Biden administration’s efforts to implement the IRA as a radical climate agenda. Can you explain how New Hampshire communities that are vulnerable to increasing damaging flooding, such as Hampton this week, Dover, Portsmouth, as well as low-income and underserved communities all along our most vulnerable coasts can reduce and respond to climate impacts without the IRA.

JOE MANCHIN: The IRA is probably the most prolific piece of legislation we’ve ever had as far as moving both agendas in the climate. As I’ve said before, we’re all responsible for the climate, and I take it very seriously. We’re using, the world is using and it’s called global climate not New Hampshire climate not West Virginia climate or United States climate—it’s global climate. If  you look at what’s happening in the world, we’ve been decreasing, and we can do it more than any other country. I’ve always said you cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner climate. You can innovate, if you want the world to follow. 

BELTRAN: By “innovate” does he mean we should focus more on technology?

McKENNA: Senator Manchin wants the priority to be on cutting carbon emissions through things like carbon capture and storage. And he wants us to be energy secure through the continued use of fossil fuels.

MANCHIN: But there’s my friends on the far left who believe they can eliminate—stop using this, stop using that. That’s not going to happen. Ninety percent of all pollution will come from one continent, Asia, in the next 10 years. 

McKENNA: He’s saying in comparison, our emissions here in the U.S. are going to be a drop in the bucket. But he’s getting a lot of pushback for his pro-fossil fuels stance.

Later that day, after “Politics and Eggs” there was a “Cup of Joe” meet-and-greet in Derry where some climate activists from the group Climate Defiance surrounded the senator; they got right up in his face.

ACTIVISTS: Off fossil fuels, Manchin, off fossil fuels.

DOERING: Sounds like these protesters mean business.

McKENNA: Yeah, at first Manchin tried to engage the protesters, he said, OK, let’s talk.

But they just kept chanting and all he could do was kind of smile and shrug it off.

The protesters completely disrupted the event for a few minutes before they were escorted out by police.

BELTRAN: As a politician from coal-rich West Virginia, fossil fuels have been pretty central to Senator Manchin’s career, right?

McKENNA: As you know, he’s been an outspoken supporter of coal, oil and other fossil fuels even as the Democratic party as a whole wants to phase them out. He chairs the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is the largest recipient of oil and gas money in all of Congress. In 2022 alone, he received almost $780,000 in campaign finance from the oil and gas industry, according to the nonprofit OpenSecrets. He has also made millions of dollars over the decades from a coal brokerage company he founded before entering politics.

Back in 2010 he literally shot a hole in a climate bill in a campaign ad.

DOERING: Wow…and I do remember there was a lot of back and forth between Sen. Manchin and the Biden administration when drafting and voting on the Inflation Reduction Act.

McKENNA: That’s right, and now that the IRA is being implemented, that back and forth continues. At a hearing last week, Senator Manchin threatened to sue the administration for putting too much emphasis on clean energy incentives and not enough on energy security.

BELTRAN: What else did other New Hampshire voters have to say about the climate crisis and elections?

McKENNA: Well, you heard that question at the breakfast event and the reference to recent flooding in the beach town of Hampton, New Hampshire. I decided to go there to hear what people had to say and spoke to Steve Deshaies, the owner of Ocean Cycles and Board Shop in Hampton Beach. He sells skis and ice skates but isn’t selling much of anything this winter.

STEVE DESHAIES: We’re getting rain, and we’re getting warm weather. And I mean, like, it’s totally killed the business. You know, our sales are probably off 80 percent. 

McKENNA: He had water enter his shop floor on Wednesday and again on Saturday, he told me that it was the worst he has seen in the nearly 30 years he has been there.

DESHAIES: It came into the building; you can see if you look under the bench, you can see seaweed. The water was right up to the door about three-quarters of the way through the high tide. And then the fire truck drove by and sent this big wave right across the sidewalk and—bang. 

McKENNA: And Steve Deshaies said he doesn’t have flood insurance.

DOERING: Did he say anything about whether he thinks climate change is related?

McKENNA: He said he isn’t sure if climate change is to blame, but if it is, he said it’s too late to do anything about it. He didn’t think Manchin, if he decides to run, had a chance against Trump, and would likely vote for the former president.

BELTRAN: What did the other folks you spoke with have to say about the flooding?

McKENNA: I spoke to Charlotte Brown, who avoided the downtown area completely, since everything had to be shut down.

CHARLOTTE BROWN: I think some of it is infrastructure. But I think a lot of the worst part of it is from climate change, absolutely. I think climate is a huge issue. And if we don’t start addressing it, we’re not going to have the opportunity to address it properly. 

McKENNA: Charlotte told me that she’s an independent who will not vote in the Republican primary. She says we have to do something about climate, but she’s not sure who she will vote for in the general election.

DOERING: It sounds like a lot of the folks you spoke to are living the reality of the climate crisis, but we’ll have to see how that translates to the ballot box. I guess Senator Manchin hasn’t made up his mind yet about running for president, but what could a Manchin campaign mean in the general election?

McKENNA: Past isn’t necessarily prologue but if you remember 2000, George W. Bush narrowly won New Hampshire over Al Gore. Thousands of votes that might have gone to Gore went instead to Ralph Nader of the Green Party, potentially changing the outcome of the election both in New Hampshire and the country. 

Some may be wondering—or even hoping—if Senator Manchin could have a similar effect and tip the election in one direction or another.