Was the West Virginia gubernatorial race even winnable for Republicans?

[Potus]

The money situation was pretty unbelievable. I remember early on in the cycle thinking that RGA and the Cole SuperPAC would take a more active role throughout the entire year. In the two weeks leading up to the Democrat primary, the fact that Justice is a jerk to cops, screws over business partners, and very illegally evading his obligations to the government were all very salient, new, and a chance to drive the narrative. There was data detailing how many voters were supporting Jim Justice for his business experience. We are talking a huge chunk of Democrat primary voters, the most loyal general election voters. Basically, the non-Justice Democrat was DoA in the fall. It was clear to everyone, too. This wasn't just some special circumstance found in the data. It was pretty much conventional wisdom that Justice was their best candidate, Kessler would get annihilated, and Goodwin was sort of an empty suit who was even more bearable than Justice.

Back to just the money situation, Justice spent an ungodly amount of money. I'm always a bit surprised that everyone is confused when candidates whose only substantial media presence is in the last month, month and a half of the campaign lose. This was the biggest lesson, for me as someone who gets involved in campaigns, of the 2012 presidential election. Early money is not wasted money. Justice had free reign to decide how people see him. The hefty, nice, maybe a little dumb but apparently gets the job done businessman who speaks like a lot of folks used to in my state. That was a pretty alright guy that you can't really assign all of these bad things to. He spent an enormous amount of his own money selling that during primary season, during the summer, and it made the RGA attacks in the fall less likely to stick.

There are some other tangential things that would have narrowed the margin, but added together, I'm not sure they would have changed the outcome. The tax increase during special session comes to mind. It was very high profile, lots of folks in the activist community were paying attention. Cole was the one who didn't promise to avoid tax increases if he want. Jim Justice promised no new taxes and to keep spending where it is. It's nonsense, but when your candidate is either not smart enough to know what he's saying or is a terrific, tax-dodging liar that he can say it anyway, you've hit the electoral jackpot. Problem is, it means he's a bad person and unlikely to be a very good governor.

Other small stuff, things like what appearances were done. I don't really think that is a reason things turned out the way it did, but I remember some chatter among political folks being concerned that Cole was at a bunch of Business and Industry Council, Chamber of Commerce events and Lincoln Day Dinners. Maybe it's a product of data showing the damage of the tax hikes to activist enthusiasm. Like I said, I don't think this did it, but the chattering class thought all of those people were already voting for him.

I know this is going to sound like corporate crony EVIL CONSERVATIVE backdoor reasoning. However, West Virginia has extraordinarily strict contribution limits. $1,000 for the primary. $1,000 for the general. At the federal level, when you get a max contribution, you can do real work with it. The result of this is that those most able to self-fund are hugely advantaged by the system. Justice cut his own campaign millions, Cole funded himself with hundreds of thousands. Matching state contribution limits to federal limits would open the door to a lot of people to run and be competitive.