West Virginia GOP candidate Don Blankenship releases ad attacking Mitch McConnell's 'China family'

Don Blankenship.
(Image credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Don Blankenship may not win West Virginia's upcoming Republican Senate primary, but he's No. 1 when it comes to releasing campaign ads featuring bizarre nicknames and racist descriptions of people's relatives.

Translation: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is married to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, whose father, James Chao, was born in China. He is a very rich man, thanks to the shipping company he started. "Cocaine Mitch" is apparently a nod to a 2014 report in The Nation about cocaine that was found aboard a ship owned by Chao's company. McConnell is the "swamp captain" because he's part of the Republican establishment, and Joe Manchin is West Virginia's Democratic senator, up for re-election. I have no idea who the "swamp people" are, nor do I want to.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.