Dandy
Posts: 3,237
WV was blue for the longest time. Kennedy’s father had people down here all over southern WV to make sure his son won. There is a fascinating book about with the title being a direct quote from daddy called, Don’t Buy Another Vote; I Won’t Pay for a Landslide.”
Many, many local elections have Republicans running unopposed in the primaries because there are so few of them. The Democratic primaries will have many choices.
The state has voted Democratic for everything but President until very recently (read: a BLACK man as President??? NO says we!) to the point that Dems typically had the Governor, Senate, and House most years and had 80 years or so of Democratic control. They elected a Democratic Governor last election only for him to turn R after elected.
But these are still uneducated white people we are talking about and quite a bit of them are evangelicals. So the climate has shifted toward straight R even from registered D’s. It is basically the Dixiecrats, only 60 years later. And that is very appropriate for the always-behind-the-times WV.
But coal is still king in the southern half of the state and our legislators make sure it remains that way as it continues to die (highest tonnage extracted/sold was in 1947), so the perfect storm of a black man that was against bowing to coal; a white woman that has killed anyone that walks or crawls that was against bowing to coal; and a snake oil salesman that sold them, well, knock off snake oil at double the price he quoted and only delivered 1/8 the volume. . .that also PUT ON A HARD HAT AT A RALLY AND USED A SHOVELING MOTION TO TELL THEM HE DIGS COAL to turn this state as red as can be for the national level.
But, things are not far from turning back to all blue on the undercard, including Governor.
