By TRIP GABRIEL, New York Times-, W.Va. — Although Democrats have owned West Virginia’s two Senate seats since the Eisenhower administration, Republicans are eyeing this state as one of their best bets as they seek to win a Senate majority next year.Enlarge This Image Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesSenate race polls show Representative Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, winning the votes of up to one in three Democrats.An accelerating rightward tilt here was reflected recently in an awkward two-step by the Democratic nominee for an open seat, Natalie Tennant, as she distanced herself from the White House after a fund-raising trip to New York.In a Sheraton ballroom, Ms. Tennant, West Virginia’s secretary of state, listened to Michelle Obama urge donors to write “a big old fat check” to her and other women running for the Senate.But back home, where President Obama is deeply unpopular, Ms. Tennant’s campaign quickly sought to wriggle out of the embrace of the White House, insisting to the local news media that “what the first lady said is not an endorsement.”

Mr. Obama lost all 55 of West Virginia’s counties in 2012 despite a two-to-one registration edge for Democrats, who are increasingly estranged from the national party over issues like guns, immigration and environmental regulations.“I think there’s a dam ready to break here,” said Chris Hansen, the campaign manager for Ms. Tennant’s opponent, Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican congresswoman in her seventh term.Both Ms. Tennant and Ms. Capito seek to succeed the departing Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Standard Oil heir who came to the state in 1964 to work with the rural poor as a Vista volunteer, just a few years after John F. Kennedy cemented his presidential nomination by winning the West Virginia primary.

via West Virginia Democrats Face an Uneasy Time – NYTimes.com.