71 Pro-Labor Candidates Just Filed to Run in West Virginia…Together

At the very end of last year, reporting for the American Prospect, David Dayen explained why he thinks the West Virginia gubernatorial election is the most important race in the country, with "implications that endure the farthest into the future." Dayen wrote that the election "just might inaugurate a new kind of people-centered politics in the heart of what’s assumed to be Trump country... Smith’s bet, that building a people’s movement will generate a deeper well of support to take back West Virginia from a corrupt political structure, would be transformational. It would deliver a roadmap for how to organize in rural towns thought to be lost to the right wing forever. It would identify how to bring in infrequent voters who have given up on politics. It would lay out how to break a corrupt establishment and return government to its people, on principles that bring people together rather than driving them apart. If this can work, it opens up an entirely new style of politics, one rooted in something so simple it’s absurd that it seems so novel: respecting the wishes and needs of the electorate. 'My whole life, I’ve been told that voters are the problem, they vote against their own interests,' Smith says. 'We believe the opposite. Voters are the answer to the problem, not the problem themselves. We think the people closest to the problem should solve it.'"

In 2019 we endorsed Stephen Smith for governor of West Virginia and introduced you to the West Virginia Can't Wait movement. That movement has almost morphed into a political party now, replacing the moribund state Democratic Party, which is little more than a political machine for Joe Manchin. "This has never happened before in our nation," Stephen told me a couple of days ago, "let alone in a place like West Virginia. The wealthy Good Old Boys hate it. But there aren’t nearly enough of them to stop us if we join together and demand what West Virginia has never had before: government by and for our people, not just the powerful."

I asked Stephen to expand those sentiments into a guest post. Please read it-- and if you like what he has to say, consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the 2020 Blue America gubernatorial thermometer above. David Dayen is right about how important this race really could be for the whole country.

Guest Post
-by Stephen Smith

Two years ago, West Virginia educators sparked a nationwide strike movement. Now, the state’s working class is leading the nation again. On Saturday, a coalition called West Virginia Can’t Wait gathered more than 200 supporters outside the state House chambers to announce that 71 candidates.

Candidates include 11 teachers and school service personnel, like Brittney Barlett (an English teacher running for Delegate in Lewis County) and Johnny Nick Hager (a school bus driver running for Mingo County Commission). Tina Russell is a Black social worker who’s running against an incumbent who suggested that if he discovered his children were gay, he would drown them. Rosemary Ketchum is running a vibrant grassroots campaign for Wheeling City Council; when she wins, she will become the first openly transgender person to hold elected office in West Virginia. The vast majority of candidates are running for the first time.

In a state where less than 20 percent of the legislature are women, less than 10 percent are working class, and less than 5 percent are people of color, the West Virginia Can’t Wait candidates represent the state across race, county, gender, and class lines. And every one of them has signed a pledge, which was read on Saturday at the Capitol by Congressional candidate Cathy Kunkel: “I promise not to take corporate cash… I promise never to cross a picket line… I promise never to hide from a debate… I promise never to punch down.”

Dozens of the WV Can’t Wait candidates filed for office at the Capitol, posing for photos with friends and family who never could have imagined being in this spot. “I’ve never been to the Capitol. I didn’t know where I was supposed to go. But I knew I needed to fight for a state where my kid could grow up and make a living,” said veteran David Childers, a first-time candidate for the state senate in the rural 14th district.

Candidates also delivered their “People’s State of the State” address, unveiling the WV Can’t Wait policy platform which had been crowd-sourced during 156 Town Halls. 47 “Platform Parties” and more than 11,000 face-to-face conversations with voters. It includes the first state-level Wealth Tax in the nation, a massive shift from corporate tax giveaways to local businesses and entrepreneurship, full cannabis legalization, aggressive caps on drug prices, public financing of elections, and more-- 32 plans in all, which are being rolled out at wvcantwait.com.

Delegate Danielle Walker, from the 51st House District, was one of 8 candidates who delivered part of the People’s State of the State.

“We will choose the side of miners, by granting a state Black Lung Pension Fund and a jobs guarantee. We will choose the side of women, and advance the nation’s most ambitious guarantee of child care, health care, education, reproductive rights, and economic opportunity. We will choose the side of Black and Brown people, and pass the nation’s most ambitious plan to end mass incarceration and attack the racial discrimination that persists in education, hiring, and health care. We will choose the side of the LGBTQ+ community, and pass the nation’s strongest EHNDA laws, ban conversion therapy, and recognize the dignity of every human being. We will choose the side of homeless people, fighting for a homes guarantee. We will choose the side of veterans by guaranteeing not only higher education and job opportunities, but also our country’s most ambitious mental health care plan, a veterans nursing home in Beckley, and a tax credit for those who have served. And we will choose the side of people with disabilities, by clearing the IDD/Waiver waiting list, ending discrimination in pay and transportation, implementing the Olmstead Act, and growing a disability jobs program.” (View other detailed plans on small business, wages, the overdose crisis, and more at wvcantwait.com.)

The WV Can’t Wait strategy is having some early successes. In addition to recruiting and training 71 candidates and defining many of the key issues in the race, many of those candidates are getting early traction. In my own race, we have an early lead in the polls and we have outraised every other candidate in the race-- on both sides of the aisle! Our campaign has more than doubled the previous record for small dollar donations in a West Virginia governor’s race.

Movements are not led by candidates… those people get the most credit. But they are not the ones who sacrifice the most or work the hardest. The most crucial leaders in any movement are the people who do the most work for the least recognition. These people come from every walk of life, but they tend to be mostly women, mostly working class, mostly young people. These people sacrifice what’s most precious to them-- money, security, time with their families-- because they believe in something bigger than any one of us. Our movement is no different. This is the first union campaign staff in West Virginia history.

West Virginia’s primary is May 12th. Follow the West Virginia Can’t Wait movement at facebook.com/wvcantwait.

How Can California Help West Virginia?

Glad you asked. As you may know, the only gubernatorial candidate endorsed by Blue America so far this cycle is dedicated populist Stephen Smith. If that name is new to you, here's the guest post he did for us a month ago. In the post he tried to shatter common misconceptions about his state. "Some of you," he wrote "think we 'vote against our own interests.' But Good Old Boy Democrats held power here for 82 years, while wages fell, jobs vanished, and our divorce, obesity, and overdose rates soared. We’re not wrong to question whether the party has had our interests at heart. Some of you think we’re backwards. But it was our teachers and school service personnel who sparked a nationwide strike movement last year. And this February, our educators walked out again-- this time to reject an “education reform” bill that would have paid them the raise they were after-- because they knew the bill would make things worse for our kids by privatizing schools. Some of you call our home Trump Country. But more of us opted not to vote in 2016 than voted for the President. A 2017 poll of likely voters revealed that we favor Bernie over Trump, 48 to 46 percent. In West Virginia, we are rejecting a political establishment that rejected us long ago. We’re not foolish. We’re fed up."

Rumors are rampant-- both in West Virginia and in DC-- that conservative Democrat Joe Manchin will be announcing for governor next month. He doesn't have to give up his Senate seat to run and if he wins, he gets to pick the next senator (for about 9 months when there will be a special election a Republican would likely win). Manchin might beat Republican Jim Justice in a general election, but it would be a lot harder for him to win a Democratic primary against Stephen Smith. Smith is running one of the most exciting 2020 statewide campaigns in the country.

While Smith has his sights set on the governor’s mansion, the progressive-populist campaign he’s running isn’t just about that. Smith is setting out to build a statewide movement; his gubernatorial run is just the anchor.

“What we’re interested in is fundamentally changing who the government works for, and you can’t do that with one candidate, no matter what the office is,” Smith said in a phone interview with The Intercept. “So the way we do that-- the way we win that-- is by building an unprecedented political infrastructure in our state’s history.”

Operating with the battle cry of “West Virginia Can’t Wait,” the campaign is setting out to create a pipeline of progressive, working-class candidates to defeat the “good old boys.” The plan isn’t to get a new governor “and pat ourselves on the back,” Smith said.

The result is a broad political organizing effort: locally organized groups led by local “captains” and leaders dubbed “Constituency Captains” who volunteer to mobilize their communities. “This movement will be built by 1,000 leaders, not one,” says the campaign’s website. Key to these efforts are the small donors, who made up the rolls that broke the secretary of state’s software.

Smith won't identify himeself as a 'progressive.' Yet his campaign draws inspiration from the Battle of Blair Mountain, an armed uprising of coal miners in West Virginia, widely considered to be the largest labor rebellion in American history. “In 1921, West Virginia mineworkers-- black, white, and immigrant-- marched together on Blair Mountain against corporate rule,” says a video [above] on Smith’s campaign site. “They wore red bandanas to identify themselves in battle.”

The video cuts to a West Virginia Can’t Wait event where red bandanas are being handed out, then showing a crowd of onlookers with the kerchiefs around their necks.

Though stopping short of taking up arms, Smith in fact takes a host of standard progressive positions. He is emphatic about rejecting corporate cash, unapologetically supports a single-payer health care system, and is in favor of free college. But he refers to his ground game as a “people’s campaign.” The outlook is based on the fundamental belief that the everyday people of West Virginia are far better suited to solve their problems than the out-of-state lobbyists, out-of-state landowners, and monopolies that dominate the state. Smith said, “Our government would work a whole lot better for all of us if all of us were in charge, instead of a handful of lobbyists.”

It’s not an exaggeration. In January, Justice, the Republican governor, handpicked a registered lobbyist who represents his own family’s companies to replace former state Sen. Richard Ojeda, an aggressively pro-labor Democrat who left his seat for a short-lived presidential run. Justice, who campaigned in 2016 as a political outsider, is the wealthiest person in West Virginia. He inherited his coal mining business from his father, which allowed him to build a massive business empire of more than 100 companies.

It was Justice who gave the Republican Party nearly full control of West Virginia, long a bastion of southern Democratic support that has turned increasingly red on the state level. Justice had switched to the Democratic Party to run for governor, only to switch back to the GOP less than seven months after taking office.

Smith’s campaign wants to turn the governor’s mansion blue again, despite the fact that West Virginia handed Donald Trump his second largest margin of victory in the 2016 presidential race. The state is not inherently red, Smith’s team contends, and their anti-establishment message paves a plausible path to victory. After all, it’s the same state that voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary.

“What we’re seeing all across the country is that the government is failing our people and both parties are failing our people,” Smith said. “Our people are picking up the baton and saying, ‘You know what, we can govern ourselves.’”

West Virginia Can't Wait, the campaign, formally launched at the end of November 2018 and has since held 12 kickoff events across the state. But the campaign doesn’t want Smith to be the face of the movement; the movement is supposed to transcend a single candidate and build a lasting infrastructure of political power.

The roadmap is simple: Organize locally, recruit local candidates who know their neighbors’ needs, and run those candidates in local races. So far, Smith’s campaign has recruited an estimated 56 candidates and potential candidates who are mulling a run in 2020. They have their sights set on positions like city council memberships, magistrate judge seats, county commissioners, and delegates. Their candidate pipeline includes people who are ready to go-- and have their campaign website set already-- to others who are considering running for office for the first time and want go to a training to get a sense of what it takes.

Smith’s campaign will train candidates and their campaign staff. Perhaps most crucially, West Virginia Can’t Wait will grant these smaller campaigns access to their team and join them on the trail, opening up town halls and events to the local candidates.

“When the election rolls around, the 10 volunteers that you’re recruiting for your city council race combined with the 10 I’m getting from the governor’s race and the 10 someone else is getting for the delegate’s race means that we all have 40, instead of 10 each,” Smith said.

The other part of their strategy is to get at least two “County Captains” in each of the state’s 55 counties, a position intended to act as a community organizer rather than a campaign spokesperson. West Virginia Can’t Wait has recruited and trained more than 160 people to work as County Captains, who are then responsible for building their own volunteer team within the county.

Those county teams will receive support from the statewide campaign but will be given the latitude to craft their approaches to specific local issues and concerns. West Virginia Can’t Wait has laid out a number of steps toward this end: County teams are to identify local issues by talking to at least 1,000 voters; plan events and actions; recruit and train additional volunteers; identify community members who might want to run for office as part of a slate; and run a get-out-the-vote operation leading up to the primary and general elections.

Another prong of the organizing calls for “Constituency Captains” to build support within their communities, the campaign says. These organizers-- distinct from the “county” organizing groups because they instead find likeminded individuals-- are to develop an online presence, host meetups, plan public events, and recruit candidates from their crew.

“It’s more a movement than a campaign, to be honest with you, for the simple fact that he’s trying to get everybody involved in his campaign, such as the Muslim community, the youth, the African American community, the LGBTQ community, anybody and everybody,” said Ibtesam Barazi, who has a long history of advocating for immigrant and refugee rights in West Virginia and is an adviser to the campaign as well as a captain of the Muslim constituency team.

It isn't Jim Justice that frightens Manchin. It's Stephen Smith... and his movement. Please consider clicking on the thermometer on the right to contribute to the movement/campaign. "The West Virginia Can't Wait campaign," wrote Aída Chávez for The Intercept last month, "is building on a renaissance of populism. 'West Virginia has a long and deep history of bottom-up politics and distrust for both parties,' Smith said. 'And that energy was not invented by our campaign. It was invented, you know, a hundred years ago during the Mine Wars. And people have kept connected to it and building our state off of it for a long time.' The campaign is seeking to harness the momentum of a major organizing feat last year: a wildcat teachers’ strike. Thousands of public school teachers and staffers across the state had launched an illegal nine-day strike to rebel against years of stagnant wages, poor working conditions, and privatization of the school system. During the work stoppage, Smith joined a handful of other organizers in setting up a support fund to help the teachers and school service personnel make ends meet, raising more than $332,000, mostly from small donations. Not only did teachers win concessions, but the teachers’ victories helped spark a wave of strikes across Republican-led states, including Arizona, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. The resurgence of Appalachian populism might cut both ways: Many analysts think Trump’s election and the Republican takeover of the state legislature suggest that West Virginians are increasingly turning more conservative. Smith disagrees, suggesting that the problems that have left so many West Virginians behind are evident in both parties: “More people stayed home in 2016 than voted for the president in West Virginia.” He also cited polling that has found West Virginians prefer Sanders over Trump. According to a survey a Sanders pollster conducted in late 2017, the Vermont senator would beat Trump by 2 percentage points in the state."

Smith’s wariness of more centrist, establishment-oriented Democrats could become the major theme of his primary race. Sen. Joe Manchin, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress and frequent Trump ally, may yet jump into the governor’s race: He told Politico earlier this month that he’s thinking about running for the “best job in the world” and will make a decision sometime this fall.

Smith’s supporters note Manchin did a similar dance in 2016 and ultimately decided against trying to get into the governor’s mansion. Manchin barely won his Senate reelection last year-- the toughest race of his career-- against GOP Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. And despite Manchin’s decisive victory in the primary, that race offered a ray of hope for campaigns like Smith’s: The incumbent senator’s progressive primary challenger, Paula Jean Swearengin, pulled in 30 percent of the vote despite having a fraction of the name recognition and campaign cash. National politics might, however, keep Manchin out of the governor’s race entirely: In 2020, he would be giving up a seat that’s crucial to the Democratic Party’s uphill battle of retaking the Senate.

Smith is visiting family in California next week and former West Virginians here are hosting five FREE events for people to get to meet him in person.

• June 18 in L.A.
• June 20 in Santa Monica
• June 22 in San Francisco (morning)
• June 22 in Portola Valley (afternoon)
• June 22 in San Francisco (evening)

Blue America's First Gubernatorial Endorsement Of 2020: Stephen Smith, West Virginia

West Virginia gubernatorial candidate Stephen Smith is a West Virginia native, lifelong organizer, and public servant. And, as of today, Blue America's first endorsed candidate for governor for the 2020 election cycle. Last year, WV Living magazine named Stephen "West Virginian of the Year" for his consistent work in fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with poor and working families as the Director of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition. He grew up in a tight-knit West Virginia family, one that had the means to support him to attend college at Harvard University. His experience at school quickly taught him about our rigged economic system-- and about how to fight for change. He tells us that the hallmark of his time at college was helping to organize a 21-day student sit-in that brought about a living wage for Harvard janitors, food service workers, and security guards. His track record has extended from there.

After moving back to his hometown in 2012, and prior to his bid for Governor, Stephen helped to build dozens of powerful local and statewide institutions. Under his leadership at the Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, the group organized hundreds of rural development projects and more than two dozen successful issue campaigns. When the national teachers strike started in West Virginia in 2018, Stephen helped build a Strike Fund that raised and distributed $332,000 to teachers and their families.

Smith, with his nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic, is running a massive field operation against the richest man in West Virginia, Jim Justice. A Trumpist coal baron and casino owner known for literally sitting down on the job. Justice, who was elected as a fake Democrat only to switch to the GOP almost immediately, was recently dubbed Forbes Magazine’s Deadbeat Billionaire.

Today, the stage is set. And don’t be fooled; West Virginia is a place that is ripe for revolution. Not only did the Teachers Strike start in West Virginia; Bernie outpolls Trump 48-46 in the Mountain State. When West Virginians voted in 2016, they didn’t pick a party, they picked a fight. And Smith and his team are poised to channel that righteous outrange into a winning people’s campaign. As Smith says, "we’ve done it before." In fact, the thing we like most about Smith’s campaign is its connection to successful, multi-racial rebellions of the past: namely West Virginia's rich labor history. Check out his unique, inspiring campaign video above. If you’re not sold yet, keep an eye out for the more than 59 candidates who Smith and his team have already recruited as a part of a West Virginia Can’t Wait candidate pipeline. That’s right, the Smith team is building a slate to run alongside Stephen. West Virginia is preparing for the contest of a generation. Here’s our chance to get in and show solidarity.


Why I’m Running
-by Stephen Smith, stephen@wvcantwait.com

You can feel it. This is a moment. Every 50 years or so, the nation turns to West Virginia for leadership. The American revolution started here. The Civil War, the Mine Wars, the Teachers’ Strike-- it is in our blood to fight for our people, no matter their race, their accent, or who their father was.

My name is Stephen Smith and I’m running for Governor, because I want my sons to know whose side I was on.

West Virginians may have the least, but we give the most. In West Virginia, we always hear that we’re last. But we are near the top for charitable giving, for military service, for volunteer service. We’re #1 in the amount of time we spend with our neighbors.

That’s the kind of family I grew up in-– my dad helped start the WV Coalition for the Homeless and the Public Defender Services. My mom made our house the kind of place that always had extra people in it-- foster kids, neighbors, family members who were between jobs.

I took the values I learned at home to Harvard and raised hell for working families. For four years, students and workers fought together, and we won a living wage for the janitors, cooks, and security guards. Since then, I’ve spent my career shoulder to shoulder with people who are fighting for their dignity. Seven years ago, my wife Sara and I chose to move home to West Virginia, because we wanted to raise our family in a place that cares more about who you serve than what you own.

The West Virginia organization I led for the last six years helped pass more than two dozen pieces of legislation, using old fashioned people power: health insurance for 182,000, a raise in the minimum wage, 5.2 million more school breakfasts annually. Meanwhile we lifted-up more than 300 community projects. We helped build gardens, after-school programs, and small businesses. All this happened not because of me, or because we had a lot of money, but because we knew that no one is more capable or more creative than the people who are closest to a problem.

The idea of this campaign is simple: what if the values of generosity, common sense, and courage that guided our neighborhoods also governed our statehouse?

This is the richest time in West Virginia history. Our people deserve to have the best roads and safest water we have ever had. We deserve universal, single payer health care and child care and higher education for all. We deserve an economy rigged in favor of unions, small businesses, artists, family farms, and local entrepreneurs – not out-of-state landowners and monopolies.

I’m running because the only way we get that kind of government is if we take it. No outside company or billionaire politician will save us.

We need a thousand leaders, not one.

Here’s the thing. The people of West Virginia are not America’s problem. We are her solution.

Some of you think we “vote against our own interests.” But Good Old Boy Democrats held power here for 82 years, while wages fell, jobs vanished, and our divorce, obesity, and overdose rates soared. We’re not wrong to question whether the party has had our interests at heart.

Some of you think we’re backwards. But it was our teachers and school service personnel who sparked a nationwide strike movement last year. And this February, our educators walked out again-- this time to reject an “education reform” bill that would have paid them the raise they were after-- because they knew the bill would make things worse for our kids by privatizing schools.

Some of you call our home Trump Country. But more of us opted not to vote in 2016 than voted for the President. A 2017 poll of likely voters revealed that we favor Bernie over Trump, 48 to 46 percent. In West Virginia, we are rejecting a political establishment that rejected us long ago.

We’re not foolish. We’re fed up.

And we’re taking action. Never in American history has a single person or politician won the sort of change we need and deserve. It has always required a movement, not a savior. That’s what we are building in West Virginia. It is called West Virginia Can’t Wait, and we need your help. Our movement already recruited and trained 160 County Captains across all 55 Counties-- who have executed 65 kickoffs and town halls, and more than 270 additional meetings in food pantries, clinics, small businesses, churches, and union halls.

We have recruited more than 120 Constituency Captains, who are leading 37 constituency teams-- Veterans Can’t Wait, Students Can’t Wait, Seniors Can’t Wait, LGBTQ Can’t Wait, Educators Can’t Wait People in Recovery Can’t Wait, and so on. Their building independent political power across the state, while also preparing us to govern. Because the people who are closest to the problem are also best equipped to solve it.

Finally, our movement is also recruiting candidates up and down the ballot who reject corporate cash and pledge never to cross a picket line. There are 57 in our pipeline, and we are adding more each week. We offer these mostly first-time, mostly women candidates free training, access to our network and staff, and the power of running together.

You need money to run for office. And our fundraising works. We raised more than $152,000 in our first quarter and literally broke the Secretary of State’s on-line software system because our file upload of individual donations was too large to handle. Furthermore, we have pledged that at least 1 out of every $10 we raise in this campaign will be spent on real projects that improve lives before election day-- so that voters get to know us by our actions, and not just our words.

I’ve never achieved anything in my life by myself, and I’m not starting now. I hope you’ll join us. West Virginia can’t wait.