On the eve of the House vote to pass a massive infrastructure bill last year, Rep. David McKinley received a pointed call from a Donald Trump adviser: If he voted for the package, the former president would endorse his primary opponent
Either Rep. David McKinley loses after bringing home a major federal investment in crumbling local infrastructure, or he manages to knock off Rep. Alex Mooney. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP PhotoCLARKSBURG, W.Va. — On the eve of the House vote to pass a massive infrastructure bill last year, Rep. received a pointed call from a Donald Trump adviser: If he voted for the package, the former president would endorse his primary opponent.
In an interview, McKinley declined to name Trump’s messenger but recalled telling the adviser: “We have the worst conditions. Some of the roads and bridges are 50, 70 years old. We have water lines built in 1880. I can’t do this. This is not a time to play politics. I’m voting for West Virginia.” “I don’t know the conditions of the roads and bridges in Maryland, but I do know that conditions are in West Virginia,” McKinley shot back, in an oft-repeated dig at Mooney’s roots.
At a roundtable with business and manufacturing leaders Monday morning in Clarksburg, McKinley was rattling off the benefits the state was already seeing from the legislation. Some examples: After two years of talks, Nucor Corp. announced in January itin Mason County — a decision McKinley said it felt comfortable making because of the improvements in the state’s sewage, roads, bridges and broadband enabled by the infrastructure bill.
Still, Republican polling from the Club for Growth suggests infrastructure is not popular. And the group’s president, David McIntosh, said their data suggests GOP voters see McKinley’s support for the bill not as a way to bring money to the state, but as a sign of his willingness to capitulate. Trump has yet to schedule a campaign rally or cut a TV ad for Mooney — which would amplify his support. Mooney did say Trump’s team had been in contact with chief of staff, Maryland state Sen. Michael Hough, to ask how they could be helpful.
In a frequently used explanation, McKinley said he voted for a bipartisan commission, similar to ones created to investigate the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and 9/11, “to get to the bottom” of it. On the trail, Mooney said voters tell him view McKinley’s vote as complicity in a witch hunt — but that he hears more complaints about his decision to back the infrastructure bill.
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