If you need more evidence of West Virginia’s shifting political paradigm, look at the mixed crowd that turned out for Bill Clinton’s appearance in Logan County Sunday and Hillary Clinton’s stop in Williamson Monday. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin and Senator Joe Manchin heard boos and derogatory chants mixed in with the cheers as they campaigned with the former President in Logan.
When Hillary Clinton campaigned in Williamson yesterday, angry protesters were on hand, booing and chanting “go home!”
That would have been unthinkable a few short years ago. Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush nearly two to one in Logan County in 1992, and Bob Dole by almost four to one in 1996. Tomblin got 79 percent of the vote in his home county in 2012, while Manchin had the support of 75 percent of the voters.
But since then the coal industry has been decimated by plummeting prices, slack global demand, increased competition from natural gas and punitive regulation from the Obama administration’s EPA. The subsequent layoffs at the coal mines, and the trickle-down impact on the rest of the southern West Virginia economy, have folks there reeling and seething.
Of course they are angry. Even Bill Clinton, the master of political empathy, struggled to soothe the wounded voters and re-direct the conversation toward how a Hillary Clinton presidency would make their lives better.
Manchin and Tomblin are caught in a kind of political netherworld that comes with being a prominent Democrat in West Virginia at a time when the national Democratic Party has pivoted sharply to the left on environmental issues. Tomblin has a historically strong relationship with the coal industry and business leaders, but they expressed their dismay with the Governor’s endorsement of Hillary.
“Gov. Tomblin calls West Virginia’s coalfields home, and his endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president means our governor officially is turning his back on the plight of thousands of West Virginians and their families who are struggling because of the Obama administrations’ war on Appalachian Coal,” railed West Virginia Business and Industry Council President Chris Hamilton.
However, I’ve heard more than once from Tomblin and Manchin supporters that assuming Clinton is going to be president, it’s better to establish a working relationship now for the potential future benefits. For example, Tomblin and Manchin were able to take Bill Clinton past the 12,000 acrer Hobet mountaintop removal mine site in Boone and Lincoln Counties where state leaders have been trying to attract development.
So perhaps it can be argued that Manchin and Tomblin are taking the practical approach. But that’s a tough political sell, especially after Hillary Clinton said she was going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business—a statement she later retracted and again apologized for Monday—and she has pledged to continue down the path of the Obama administration, which has been hostile toward coal through the actions of the EPA.
Hillary Clinton may still win the Democratic Primary here–we’ll know more Friday when our MetroNews West Virginia Poll is released—but a General Election victory here is highly unlikely. The last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state was her husband, and as he found out Sunday, many in the normally hospitable Mountain State have watched as their communities have crumbled.
They’re not in a welcoming mood.