# Joe Manchin **Joseph Manchin III** (b. 1947) was a U.S. Senator from West Virginia (2010–2025) — Democrat until May 2024, then independent — and before that West Virginia's governor (2005–2010) and secretary of state. In the 50–50 Senate of 2021–2023 he was the single most powerful legislator in America: the pivotal vote that determined what the Biden agenda could and could not become. ## The Veto Years (2021–2023) - **Killed Build Back Better.** In December 2021 Manchin announced on [[Fox News]] that he was a "no" on the ~$2 trillion social-spending package, single-handedly ending it - **Authored the [[Inflation Reduction Act]] in its place.** The July 2022 Schumer-Manchin deal resurrected a narrowed package on Manchin's terms: deficit reduction framing, fossil-fuel leasing guarantees, and a promised permitting-reform side deal. The IRA's shape — what survived, what died — is a direct map of Manchin's preferences - **Blocked filibuster reform.** With [[Kyrsten Sinema]], Manchin refused the January 2022 carve-out that would have allowed voting-rights legislation past the [[Filibuster]] — the decisive procedural kill of the Freedom to Vote and John Lewis Acts - **Gatekept nominees.** Sank multiple Biden nominees (Neera Tanden at OMB, Sarah Bloom Raskin at the Fed) and shaped others' viability ## The Conflicts Manchin's politics and portfolio were never separable from coal. He founded Enersystems, a coal-brokerage firm whose ownership he placed in a blind-trust-adjacent arrangement while collecting millions in dividends across his Senate tenure, and he was for years the Senate's top recipient of fossil-fuel industry money. He chaired Senate Energy and Natural Resources while personally profiting from the industry it oversees. His daughter, Heather Bresch, was CEO of Mylan during the EpiPen price-gouging scandal. The KB treats Manchin as a clean case study of **donor-and-personal-interest capture operating through a structural chokepoint**. ## Post-Senate (2025–) Manchin declined to run in 2024; his seat flipped Republican (Jim Justice), part of the Democrats' Senate-map collapse. Since leaving office January 3, 2025: a memoir, *Dead Center: In Defense of [[Common Sense]]* (September 2025); continued advocacy for permitting reform, including pitching [[Donald Trump]] directly; remaining a registered independent; and public openness (September 2025, NYT) to a third-party presidential run in 2028 — a possibility worth watching as a No Labels-style spoiler vector. ## Why He Matters for the KB Manchin is the structural-veto case study of the Biden era: how Senate malapportionment plus a 50–50 chamber handed a single coal-state senator effective line-item control over trillion-dollar national policy — and how personal financial interest, home-state industry, and donor pressure flowed through that chokepoint. The voting-rights filibuster kill is his most consequential act for the KB's democracy through-line: it left [[Shelby County v. Holder]]'s gutting of preclearance unanswered going into the 2024 and 2026 cycles.