HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Governor Jim Justice continues to use his most powerful tool to work on getting his agenda through the legislature. He’s bypassing the legislature altogether and taking his message straight to the people. He’s treating his agenda much the way he treated his campaign for the office.
He used another non-traditional method on Tuesday when he appeared live on the Big John and Company Morning Show on MetroNews Affiliate WDGG-FM in Huntington. Typically a music radio station isn’t the place politicians go to air out their political ideas, but Justice continues to show he isn’t a typical governor.
Using some of the same language he used during his State of the State Address to lay out his plan, Justice again referred to the state’s financial situation as an “18 karat dog’s mess.” The governor restated his plan to increase taxes to get the state back on a firm financial footing and his roads plan as a way to jump start the state’s economy. He acknowledged his plans have hit resistance at the Capitol and called on listeners to help him change hearts and minds.
“It’s not that our legislators are misinformed or bad people, they’re good people and they want good things too. But too many of them want to be politicians,” he said. “The people have got to get on the phone and be talking to their legislators. They need to say, ‘Listen we think Justice is going to take us out of this mess and we love his pathway out of this mess. We know we’re going to have to suffer a little bit and pay a little bit more, but it’s going to take us where West Virginia can really and truly prosper and be proud of itself.'”
The radio show appearance comes as Justice launches into a statewide tour to tout his plans directly to the people. He appeared Sunday along the completed portion of the Coalfields Expressway in Raleigh County and this Friday will appear on MetroNews Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval live from the State Capitol taking calls from the people of West Virginia to talk about his proposed remedies to the state’s fiscal calamity.
“They need to be calling their legislators and saying, ‘Listen you didn’t have a plan. You got us into this mess, now Justice is trying to take us out of this mess and he’s going to take us somewhere because he doesn’t want anything,'” the Governor said on WDGG. “You see, I don’t care about running for some other office. I don’t care about getting reelected.”
Justice touched on his other “big ideas”for the timber, gas, and coal industries in West Virginia. He also has grand ideas about agriculture and furniture manufacturing returning to the state. He claimed those ideas are still several years away, but the financial difficulties are here and now with no other alternative to be repaired.
“We’ve got to have something now,” he said. “We’ve got to stabilize the patient and have a jump start now. How we get there? I don’t care how we get there, we’ve just got to get there.”