West Virginia’s GOP Rep. Mooney announces 2024 Senate run
CEDAR PARK, W.Va./LONG BEACH, Calif. – West Virginia’s Republican Congressman calls himself “an open-minded, independent thinker.”
But on June 9, Rep. Evan Jenkins — in his new career as a 2020 Senate candidate — revealed he’s one of the House’s most conservative members to try his hand at politics.
The 30-year-old Jenkins — who announced his decision to enter political life earlier this month with a Facebook video — faced a tough decision: Do he go for a two-year term in the congressional seat he’s held since 2016, or will he run for the Senate after President Donald Trump appointed Republicans to fill both of West Virginia’s two Senate seats.
President Trump tapped the GOP incumbents to fill the two seats that will be open when Sen. Joe Manchin takes the Senate seat that’s been held by Sen. Susan Collins since 2013 and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s election to the seat that had been held by former Sen. Jay Rockefeller since 2009.
“I had to make the hard decision if I want to be a part of the future that we’re going to build or not,” Jenkins told WBGU’s “West Virginia Today” on Tuesday. “I knew that I had to make a decision to have a successful career in politics, but I didn’t know that I was going to be a senator.”
The son of a coal miner, Jenkins got his start campaigning for political office, first running for mayor of Charleston in 2005, and then running for his high school class president and eventually graduating from the University of Charleston in 2007. While at the University of Charleston, Jenkins served on the board of the West Virginia University Board of Trustees and also served on the board of the West Virginia Center for Public Policy.
Jenkins’ political career took off