Dig Coal, Sell Dope, Or Join The Army

WV-03-- the southern third of West Virginia-- had two populist landslides in 2016. First Bernie beat Hillary by over 20 points and, in many counties, Bernie got more votes than Trump did on the same day in the GOP primary. Then, in the general, the 3rd was Trump's biggest district in the state. He beat Hillary by a shocking 72.5% to 23.3%. The PVI of West Virginia is R+19. The PVI of WV-03 is R+23. But this cycle a Democratic state senator, Richard Ojeda, is leading in many polls. Huh? Yeah. He picked the presidential candidate voters there backed both times-- Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general. And he's been very tight with arch-conservative U.S. Senator Joe Manchin who won every single county in the district last time he ran. I have very mixed feelings about this race.

The latest poll of West Virginia from Emerson shows Manchin strongly ahead of Republican Patrick Morrisey, 45-33% with 16% undecided. And it shows Ojeda ahead of Republican Carol Miller 36% to 31%-- but with a monstrous 33% undecided. Other polls show Miller gaining on or leading Ojeda. The DCCC just announced they're going to spend significant money in the district, easily the reddest district they're contesting this cycle. Odd that the DCCC should jump in since this is from the FiveThirtyEight.com forecaster:

1 in 10? That's daunting. But 538 has it wrong on this one and Ojeda is undaunted anyway. He may not win, but this is going to be a very close race.

TV news bureaus have been covering the race with interest. This week Fox reported that West Virginia 'Trump Democrat' congressional hopeful 'threatened' Republican delegate on Facebook messenger. For Fox fans is that even negative? Probably more confusing. "A Democrat seeking a U.S. House seat in deep-red West Virginia," reported Lukas Mikelionis, "made an apparent physical threat to a state delegate, saying 'when I’m done with you, you will beg me to ease up.' Richard Ojeda, an Army veteran and state senator who’s been branded as a 'JFK with tattoos and a bench press' and a so-called 'Trump Democrat' for voting for the president during the 2016 election, has been accused of physically threatening Rupie Phillips, a Republican member of the West Virginia House of Delegates since 2013.

Phillips is a Democrat-turned-Republican who ran for the party’s nomination for U.S. Congress but lost to Republican Carol Miller-- Ojeda’s opponent in the upcoming midterm election in November. He shared the threatening message in a Facebook post on Sunday. Ojeda initially blocked Phillips on Facebook after sending the message but unblocked him after the messages were posted by Phillips.

In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, he said the threat from Ojeda was prompted after Miller attended an annual craft beer tasting and a chili cook off festival in his area where he introduced her to the local crowd.

“What boils down to, [Ojeda] had some family members at the cookout and they’re talking about me taking Miller around to his hometown and introduce her to people. I guess he thought he could scare me and I guess I hurt his feelings,” Phillips said of what could have prompted Ojeda to send him the message.

The Ojeda campaign did not deny the message was sent by the candidate, but pushed back against its meaning.

“This is absurd and obviously not a threat of physical violence,” the campaign’s spokeswoman told Fox News. “Richard was speaking about exposing Del. Phillips for his corruption in the West Virginia legislature.

“Richard has stood against corruption in government from the beginning of his political career and that will never change. It’s truly sad that families in our communities are being ripped apart my opioids and devastated by poverty and Delegate Rupie Phillips has chosen to focus his attention on this. It’s obvious where his priorities are and it is not with the people of West Virginia."

Phillips claims this isn't the first time Ojeda has targeted him. In August, the Democratic candidate suggested he was a bootlicker by sending him a cartoon of a character licking a boot.

“Ever since 2014 when I wasn’t supporting him when he ran against [Democrat Rep.] Nick Rahall for U.S. Congress, he’s been against me,” Phillips said, noting that he’s never engaged with him.

“He has verbally attacked me many times on his social media over the past four years and I just bit my tongue, being a bigger person and going down the road,” he added.

The local lawmaker said he read the message as a threat of physical violence and called Ojeda a “school yard bully” who doesn’t “know what to do when someone stands up to him.”

Ojeda is running in a district that Trump won by 50 points. Despite the deep-red district, Ojeda has been making gains, with the latest poll claiming he’s leading his Republican opponent by five points. An earlier poll, meanwhile, said Miller is leading by eight points.

His campaign carries a populist theme, including his support for the coal industry and hopes of seeing Trump succeed as the president. But despite such comments, he also made numerous anti-Trump remarks.

“He hasn’t done shit,” Ojeda told Politico about Trump, expressing regret at having supported the Republican presidential nominee. “It’s been a friggin’ circus for a solid year,” he continued, claiming that Trump hadn’t changed anything for the people.

“All he’s done is shown that he’s taking care of the daggone people he’s supposed to be getting rid of,” Ojeda added.

As of the June 30 FEC reporting deadline, Miller had raised $743,092 to Ojeda's $514,796, although she's very wealthy-- and wrote her campaign a check or $220,400 out of her personal bank account-- and he's a working class guy. Last week Bloomberg News ran a piece by Albert Hunt, How to Be a Democrat in Trump Country. "Southern West Virginia is the heart of coal country and cultural conservatism, with gun shops, Assemblies of God churches and American flags dotting the landscape," he wrote. "The region's congressional district is dominated by white, non-college-educated voters. President Donald Trump carried it by 50 percentage points in 2016. Yet Richard Ojeda, a grandson of an illegal Mexican immigrant, has an even chance this November to take over the area's Republican-held seat in the House of Representatives. The one-term state senator is a tough-talking, decorated military veteran espousing the economic populism that enabled Democrats to dominate the state's politics during the second half of the 20th century."


UPDATE: Trump Brings West Virginia Worse Poverty

CBS News reported today-- just as Trump and Fox were headed off to Wheeling-- that West Virginia has a growing poverty problem, and experts there who study the issue say Americans in every state should pay attention. Trump will be touting his economic accomplishment even as "West Virginia's poverty rate climbed to 19.1 percent last year from 17.9 percent, making it just one of four states with a poverty rate above 18 percent." Señor Trumpanzee has said he's "very proud" of the state and claimed that he "turned West Virginia around." His administration has focused on reviving jobs in the coal industry, which has added about 2,000 jobs across the U.S. since Mr. Trump's inauguration." 

West Virginia's dismal trends point to an economic issue that's impacting states across the country: Workers at the bottom of the pay scale aren't benefiting from the growing economy. Their issues range from low pay to unstable and scanty work hours, which makes it difficult to earn a living wage. Almost one in four West Virginians is employed in a low-wage job, the WVCBP found.