How great was it to be a crusader for Donald Trump in January? After all, he had trounced an inept GOP field and vanquished the hated Clintons. Once inaugurated, their champion would immediately begin the task of improving their lives and those of their families while making America great again in the process.
But as Americans learn more about the governing agenda of the Trump Administration it’s abundantly clear that the loyalty of the millions of voters who answered his call to action will be tested. Nowhere was this intensity of support more evident than in West Virginia.
While Trump’s resounding victory in the 2016 West Virginia Presidential Primary was more dominant than expected, the fact that he carried all of the state’s 55 counties in the general election contest with Hillary Clinton was even more impressive. His wins also magnified West Virginia’s long-standing political and social contradictions.
Make no mistake about it, in the political lexicon of today West Virginia is a red state. Full disclosure: I was born there. But I haven’t resided in the Mountain State in over 40 years and have only visited a handful of times during that period. I have kept abreast of issues and events by scanning various newspapers from around the state, interacting on social media with current friends who also once called the state home and former classmates, many of whom remain in West Virginia.
That being said, for the first 22 years of my life the West Virginia was home. Through family connections I spent most summer vacations and holidays in cities like Washington, D.C., Orlando and Houston, but my educational and social development began on the north side of Bluefield, West Virginia. It is also the place where my progressive political ideologies originated and were nurtured.
Southern West Virginia has never been a bastion of social tolerance. As a kid, I had to stand at the counter at S.S. Kresge’s to eat a hot dog and drink a Coke while Whites sat. Blacks who wanted to see a film at the town’s “marquee” theater, the Grenada were relegated to the balcony and were forced to enter by scaling a fire escape located in the adjacent alley.
The fight song at sparsely integrated Bluefield High School where I attended was “Dixie.” To add insult to injury, Confederate flags of all shapes and sizes were waved throughout football and basketball contests. That tradition ended when the school was consolidated with the town’s other high school, which was all Black.
Although these experiences shaped my worldview, my interest in politics began at the young age of seven. Everyone around me was swept up in the phenomenon that was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. After holding an early lead, Kennedy came to West Virginia in April of 1960 trailing Hubert Humphrey by 20 points. But after aggressively campaigning throughout the state, West Virginia with a Catholic population of less than five percent handed JFK a stunning victory that would propel him to the nomination and prove that his religion would not be an impediment in his quest for the presidency.
I had found a passion and it was politics. This fascination was further fueled when my father took me to the Roanoke, Virginia airport to see President Lyndon Johnson, who was doing a tour of Appalachia in May of 1964. Reaching through the throng, I got to shake his hand, which as I remember, was extremely hairy.
In May of 1968, a friend and I took a Tri-City Traction bus 13 miles to Princeton, which is the Mercer County Seat. We went to see Robert Kennedy, who was campaigning in the West Virginia primary. We had the opportunity to be personally greeted by him in front of the courthouse just weeks before his assassination.
And in the fall of 1968, and again in 1972, I was a NAACP youth volunteer for Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaigns, although I cast my first vote in a presidential election for George McGovern. Upon graduating from Marshall University, I moved to Washington where I had the opportunity to work for Rep. Nick J. Rahall, II, who went on to serve for in Congress for 38 years
While I had left West Virginia behind, I was still connected by my work for a couple of years. I was able to maintain an in-depth awareness of the political landscape by interacting with constituents, public officials, journalists and talking with friends who remained in the state. On the surface, the Democratic Party’s dominance in the state didn’t seem to be in jeopardy at that time. But in reality, it was fragile.
Since separating from Virginia and joining the Union in 1863, West Virginia has been forced to grapple with an array of political and economic issues. After the Civil War, the state attracted hordes of European immigrants and African-Americans. Their influx served as cheap sources of labor, particularly in the mining industry where working conditions were extremely hazardous.
This also led to serious labor problems and efforts to unionize were fiercely resisted by mine owners. Strikes involved serious and extended violence during the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. State and federal troops intervened to quell miners’ strikes between 1912 and 1921. One of the more memorable clashes was the 1929 Matewan Massacre, depicted in John Sayles’ 1987 film, Matewan.
But reforms implemented during the Great Depression served as a catalyst to successful unionization. Moreover, World Wars I and II led to a rapid expansion of West Virginia’s mining, steel and chemical industries. However, obscuring this economic diversification were the circumstances that confronted residents of the coal-mining areas, particularly in southern West Virginia. Strip-mining and automation led to the displacement of thousands of miners and resulted in a substantial exodus to other states in order to reshape their economic fortunes.
By 1960, West Virginia was considered one of the most economically depressed areas of the country, primarily because of conditions in the mining regions. The antipoverty programs of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations provided some relief, but much of it was temporary, as was a brief upsurge in coal mining during the late 1970s.
But as the decade ended, the state found itself in a precarious economic situation. While the chemical industry was surviving, coal and steel were struggling. Yet, political decision makers kept their heads buried in the sand. Their focus was on keeping coal and steel on life support rather than pursuing new commercial opportunities.
Adding to the uncertainty was the gradual but incessant assault on unions, particularly the United Mine Workers. The UMW had long been the linchpin that held together the disparate interests that formed the state’s Democratic coalition: miners of all ethnic stripes, business owners who depended on their income and the industry itself as well as recipients of the largess from federal programs and African-American and progressive voters.
Mike Shott believes “the status quo was okay, as long as people were working.” Shott is a communications executive, Republican and a native of Bluefield who currently lives near Charlotte, but maintains a home in West Virginia. “The state has never been viewed as business friendly. So if the old ones are floundering and you’re not bringing in new ones what follows are despair and social problems.”
The late Senator Robert Byrd was able to steer a lot of federal dollars and projects to the state. However, the primary beneficiary has been northern West Virginia, buoyed by job growth and commercial diversification unseen in the increasingly deserted southern coalfield towns. The state’s transportation system and infrastructure are virtually nonexistent at worst and inadequate at best.
A proposal to build a regional airport between the Huntington and Charleston was rolled out 50 years ago. Despite support by then-Governor Hewlett Smith, the proposal was effectively killed. Every subsequent effort to revive the concept has failed, leaving the area with two substandard facilities and direct service to almost nowhere.
West Virginia is not only at a point in which the GOP has made inroads, but the party controls the levers of power. In hindsight this should not be a surprise. In the last four presidential elections, voters cast ballots for the Republican candidate. While the perception of West Virginia as a blue state had persisted until its current and undeniable transformation to red, the affinity by West Virginians for the Republican Party was always there.
Roi Johnson, an Atlanta area minister, was born and raised in St. Albans. He was a 30-year resident of the state before leaving. “In my view, politics in West Virginia are the same. The shift has been in parties.”
For Johnson the 2008 primary election was a watershed moment. “The visceral reaction to Obama among Whites who I had maintained positive personal relationships with didn’t coincide with the attitudes I thought that I knew.”
Los Angeles based actor and writer Monica Breckenridge was the first African-American Valedictorian and Homecoming Queen at Beckley’s Woodrow Wilson High School. Breckenridge, like most Black and White West Virginians lived in largely segregated communities, but whose lives intersected at school. “We all seemed to get along. I loved school and was both a good student and popular kid.” However, encounters with old classmates on Facebook mirrored those of Johnson, only her experiences occurred during the 2016 election.
After taking an eight-year hiatus from the social media platform, she thought that campaign season would be a great time to reengage with friends. “I reconnected and what a shock it was. The reactions were overwhelming and depressing. I was amazed that nothing seemed to penetrate the bubble of Fox News and Breitbart. Initially, I mixed it up a little bit with them, but it proved quite fruitless.”
Those hardened attitudes among West Virginia voters have propelled the GOP into political prominence that is unprecedented in its recent history. Currently, Democrats occupy the offices of governor and secretary of state as well as one of the two Senate seats. However, Republicans represent the state’s three congressional districts and the party dominates the state legislature. In the state senate the GOP holds a 22 of the 34 seats and in the house they hold a 63–37 margin.
So now Republicans will have the opportunity to show voters whether they are any better at solving the state’s problems than Democrats. In February of 2016, the legislature overrode then Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto of a Right to Work law, dealing another blow to the state’s union movement. West Virginia is also leading the nation in cuts to higher education with no plan to restore them and is in the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic.
It’s ironic that most West Virginians were among the most vehement opponents of President Obama and the Affordable Care. Yet, with the implementation of the ACA the number of state residents who are eligible for Medicaid has risen dramatically, thus giving many the opportunity to receive prescription drug coverage, mental health and substance abuse treatment and prenatal care, among other services.
Angela Dodson, a former New York Times editor who attended high school and college in West Virginia has been shocked by some of the some of the encounters that she’s had with old acquaintances on social media. “I fear for the state’s future because the economic and environmental problems are so systemic. I think too much time has been spent blaming the Obama Administration for problems that began many decades ago and far too little in finding new paths to prosperity.”
While Breckenridge is also pessimistic, she thinks that the obstacles to progress can be eventually overcome. “I believe it will get worse before it gets better. West Virginia is literally the most addicted state in the country, so they have to hit rock bottom. There will be 12 steps to work and seven stages of grief to go through, but it can get better.”
Yet many West Virginians are holding out hope that their problems will be solved by the triumphant return of coal as evidenced by the large, enthusiastic crowd that greeted then candidate Trump at a rally at the Charleston Civic Center last May. On a stage, Trump briefly donned a miner’s hat and declared that he will bring mining jobs back to West Virginia. Sure he will.
In an illuminating report, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria recently shared some sobering statistics regarding the mining industry. In 1923, which is considered to be coal’s heyday, more than 705,000 Americans were employed as miners. In 2016 that number has dwindled to roughly 66,000. In comparison, an estimated 260,00 people currently work in solar enterprises. In addition, the number of coal related facilities are disappearing as well.
Going forward coal as an industry will employ fewer and fewer workers. The nation’s vast supply of cheap natural gas and usage of renewables combined with coal’s increasing unprofitability and its negative impact on the environment are all contributing factors to mining’s impending demise. West Virginians have to come to grips with these developments, while state leaders need to be bold, innovative and persistent in order to provide the sweeping economic transformation that will be crucial in making West Virginia competitive.
The Trump Administration’s opening salvo during his first 100 days was directed at reducing or eliminating programs such as Medicaid, Meals on Wheels and Home Investment Partnership Program, among others that many West Virginias depend on. This saddens me. Not only because of the people that these programs help, but once again as throughout its past West Virginians are the victims of external interests who have pillaged the state while leaving its residents in dismaying circumstances.
The primary difference in this instance is that West Virginians were exploited for votes by an emotionally adolescent con man, who has no real idea about life in places like War, Elkhorn and Red Jacket, let alone possesses any real empathy for the state’s inhabitants. Donald Trump successfully sold a bill of goods to essentially decent people whose lives are in dire need of a turnaround, but whose long-term interests do not coincide with his.
Was West Virginia ever truly a blue state? A case can be made that it never really was one. However, as a result of its current condition and unbending voter sentiments the Mountain State’s true color is finally showing. The voters in West Virginia have gone all in and placed their faith in a disingenuous hustler from Long Island. Unlike historical encounters with robber barons and the unwarranted consequences that followed, this time their fates will be deserved.
Lawson Brooks is a Washington, DC based Consultant and Writer, a graduate of Marshall University and a native of Bluefield, West Virginia.