Joe Manchin will not run for president as a third-party candidate

Senator Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia, will reportedly announce on Friday that he will not run for president as a third-party candidate.

Mr Manchin will reportedly make the announcement at his alma mater, West Virginia University in Morgantown, his spokeswoman confirmed to The Independent. CNN first reported the story.

The conservative Democratic senator announced in November that he would not run for re-election in the state where Donald Trump won every county in 2020. Mr Manchin faced an uphill battle when his former friend Governor Jim Justice, a Democrat-turned-Republican, announced he would run for Senate.

In recent months, he floated the possibility of a third-party run for president, either through No Labels or on his own. On Thursday, he spoke at the City Club of Cleveland in Ohio to talk about potentially running for president. He also discussed potential running mates for president such as retiring Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah and former senator Rob Portman of Ohio.

Mr Manchin regularly crossed the Biden administration, most notably when he killed Build Back Better, Democrats’ proposed social spending bill. He later collaborated with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to write the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest bill to combat climate change in American history.

But since the law’s passage, Mr Manchin has regularly decried how the Biden administration had implemented the law, specifically with how it relates to energy. Mr Manchin hails from coal-heavy West Virginia and founded the coal brokerage firm Enerystems.