Joe Manchin lives on a boat in Washington — and protesters are reportedly headed there

Protesters evidently want all hands on deck in the push to make Washington, D.C. a state, and they're now headed to Sen. Joe Manchin's (D-W.Va.) nautical home.

Advocates for D.C. statehood are planning a protest on Thursday, Politico reported, and they'll be gathering at Manchin's house ... boat.

"Yes," Politico writes for those unfamiliar, "[Manchin] lives on a boat docked in the harbor when he's in Washington."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Indeed, the boat, Almost Heaven, is "anchored 8 miles south of the Capitol," a Time story described in 2014, going on to note that Manchin "routinely invites senators from both parties out for evening cruises."

"I wasn't crazy on buying any real estate in Washington, not at all," Manchin told Time.

The Washingtonian may have summed it up by writing, "Manchin lives on a boat because he doesn't like living here."

In fact, this ended up sparking a Republican attack ad against Manchin in 2018, which slammed him for his "$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht." That's an assertion PolitiFact gave a "half-true" rating, writing that the boat's "40-foot length would generally qualify it as a yacht, but since Manchin lives there when he is in town, it could be just as easily described as a houseboat" — though he apparently purchased it for $220,000.

Either way, it seems Manchin is one lawmaker who at any given moment — including, perhaps, as protesters gather — is always ready to sail away into the sunset. Brendan Morrow