In a recent passage from their book This Will Not Pass, New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns describe a dinner held between top Republican senators and Democratic Sen Joe Manchin during which the group attempted to get the conservative-leaning politician to defect to their party.
The excerpt describes how Sen Susan Collins had seen a ripe opportunity for plying the West Virginian after a January 2021 dust up with Vice President Kamala Harris left the politician seeming particularly vulnerable to their entreaties.
On 28 January, the vice president provided an interview with a West Virginia television station where she answered questions about the president’s Build Back Better legislation and seemed to indirectly chide the West Virginia senator for not getting on board when she said they were facing a “crisis of unbelievable proportions” and politicians needed to “step up and stand for them”.
The appearance in West Virginia was part of a slew of media availabilities that Vice President Harris provided, but the state’s senator told reporters after the interview that he had not been given a heads up about these interviews ahead of time, viewing it as an unwelcome foray onto his turf.
“I couldn’t believe it. No one called me,” he told reporters the following week, according to USA Today.
It was this incident that then precipitated Sen Collins to believe that she should strike while the iron was hot. And so, after calling up Sen John Thune, the number two senate Republican, and Sen Rob Portman of Ohio, the group arranged to have dinner with Manchin at a Washington restaurant on 1 February.
During the dinner, the New York Times reporters describe in their book how the group of Republican senators already knew that Mr Manchin was favourable to his Republican colleagues, noting that they believed if he wanted to make another run for Senate in 2024, it’d be easier to do on their side.
Mr Thune, apparently savvy to the fact that this wasn’t the first attempt his party had made to bait Mr Manchin, informed him over the course of the dinner that it wouldn’t be necessary for him to “embrace the GOP label”.
Instead, he suggested that the West Virginia politician run as an independent.
“You don’t have to join our caucus,” Mr Thune said, according to the authors. “Just become an independent and caucus with us.”
Mr Thune then reportedly tried to lure Mr Manchin with promises of an easy election, telling him that even as an independent, the Republican party would help raise funds for his race.
“Thune suggested Manchin would likely be rewarded for taking such a step: You could write your own ticket, the South Dakotan told him. Chair a committee, we’ll help you raise money for your campaign,” the authors write.
Despite their best efforts, the West Virginian couldn’t be budged.
“John,” Mr Manchin reportedly said. “If you were leader I would do it.”
The reporters went on to describe how the golden opportunity that the Republican swayers thought was ripe for plucking was not as golden as they first presumed, as just before the West Virginian took the Washington dinner with the group, he’d been hosted at the Oval Office by the president to “patch things up”.
Following up with Mr Manchin after the excerpt was leaked, CNN’s Morgan Rimmer put the passage to the West Virginia senator and asked whether he had any recollection of the February 2021 meeting.
“We talk all the time, we have dinners together and all that. No, they’re always kidding back and forth," Mr Manchin said to CNN, before adding that he viewed the South Dakota senator as “the most decent human being” and “a good friend of mine” but ultimately they all “know where I’m at”.
“And Mitch McConnell knows. He’s tried everything humanly possible. The bottom line is I am a West Virginia Democrat."
Mr Manchin, a key Democrat in securing the Biden administration’s vast social and environment bill, nixed the legislation in December after he said he couldn’t support it in its current form.
Democrats are now attempting to salvage parts of the $2 trillion House-passed Build Back Better package, by removing spending commitments and instead focusing on deficit reduction, a move the White House hopes will appease centrist members from within the party, such as Mr Manchin.
Speaking this week to ABC News, however, the West Virginia senator provided no indication he’d be easily convinced, saying: “There’s not a Build Back Better revival. There’s not.”
“These major social changes should go through the process,” he said. “Then if you think you need reconciliation, because you got a great piece of legislation, but people are playing politics with it.”
