Nick Rahall is in trouble
Nick Rahall continues to defend and support President Obama and Washington Democrats while other West Virginia Democrats including Sen. Manchin and Gov. Tomblin acknowledge how toxic supporting the President has become. Rahall is President Obama’s biggest cheerleader in the state while the President’s war on coal destroys West Virginia’s economy.
Gov. Tomblin: “President Obama has apparently made it his mission to drive the backbone of West Virginia’s economy, coal and the energy industry, out of business. That will not only hurt thousands of West Virginia families, it will destroy the economic fabric of our state.”
May 2, 2012 Rahall: “I’m supporting Democrats this November, and that includes the Democratic nominee for president.”
82.3%: How often Rahall votes to support President Obama’s agenda. (CQ Vote Studies, accessed 5/3/2012)
Coal country site of backlash against Obama
Politico
Manu Raju
June 6, 2012
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0612/77084.html
BUCKHANNON, W.Va. — Sen. Joe Manchin didn’t vote for the felon on the ballot, but he still won’t say whether he actually checked the box for President Barack Obama in last month’s Democratic primary in West Virginia.
That’s how bad it is for Obama in West Virginia: A popular Democratic senator refuses to admit whether he voted for his party’s sitting president.
“This is something I’ve never seen in my life,” said Manchin, who’s been asked repeatedly whether he left his ballot blank instead.
Manchin’s reticence reflects the bigger challenges for Obama in West Virginia and beyond as the president tries to win over disenchanted, largely white working-class voters in swing states from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt. Even as Democrats control all levers of power in West Virginia and dominate the state’s voter registration rolls by a nearly 2-1 margin over the GOP, Obama remains just as unpopular here as he was when he lost the 2008 primary and general election by resounding margins. The state is expected to be an easy Mitt Romney win in November.
A onetime ally — the United Mine Workers of America — is considering sitting out its first election since 1980 because of concerns over the administration’s environmental policies. With the use of coal declining as a source for electricity generation, coal constituencies in states like Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Colorado could be problematic for the president given the tightly contested nature of those battlegrounds.
And after he struggled in last month’s Democratic primaries in West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky, Republicans believe the president’s problems with conservative Democrats in rural areas across the country could provide an opening for Romney in November.
“I can’t believe that is a Kentucky, Arkansas or West Virginia phenomenon,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told POLITICO. “I think the president has a kind of fundamental weakness.”
Interviews with voters across the state reveal the president’s unique weakness among working-class voters even as local Democrats like Manchin gain more strength among the electorate here. The population is more socially conservative than the national Democratic Party. The aggressive efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency to control air pollution at coal-fired power plants, seek alternative sources of energy and toughen clean water permits on mining operations have infuriated key groups here.
“Fossil fuels,” Katherine Wagner, president of the Harrison County Chamber of Commerce, deadpanned when asked about Obama’s struggles here. “That’s what West Virginia has lived on for the last century or more.”
But there are other factors as well. The president has invested scant time in the state after attending both memorial services for the late Sen. Robert Byrd and the mine workers who were killed in the Upper Big Branch disaster in 2010. He’s effectively allowed the opposition to single-handedly dominate the political narrative since there are few Democrats in the state sticking their necks out for the president. On top of that, voters and political experts believe that lingering racial issues in a state where 94 percent of the population is white could be a factor among some voters here.
“It’s difficult for any officeholder to run as an ally of the president,” said Patrick Morrisey, a Republican candidate for state attorney general.
So it’s no surprise that Manchin’s Republican opponent, John Raese, is preparing to dip into his personal fortune with heavy ad buys on TV, radio and on billboards across the state with the message that Manchin is tight with Obama, pointing to how the senator votes with the president “85 percent” of the time, including when he voted against an outright repeal of the health care law.
“Something tells me he’s for Obama,” Raese said in an interview. “Something tells me he supports Obama.”
But Manchin has projected himself as an Obama antagonist, even during his 2010 bid against Raese when a TV ad showed him shooting a bullet through cap-and-trade legislation. His approach has paid dividends since public opinion polls show him with a commanding lead.
“His unwillingness to allow himself to be restrained by either party affiliation or philosophical ideology is what I think endears him to most people,” said Tim Miley, a Democratic member of the state House.
But Miley conceded it is a more difficult needle to thread when it comes to the top of the Democratic ticket.
“Here’s what’s hard to convey to people: You’re never going to agree on every issue right down the line with anybody, including your spouse.”
At the same time, the 64-year-old Manchin, a former governor who grew up working at his family’s grocery and carpeting stores, is a highly visible retail politician, dropping by a local Sheetz gas station here to shake the hands with streams of voters while talking about parochial issues. In his stump speeches, he makes nary a mention of the president, but he’s sure to take aim at what he believes is Washington’s failure to control the deficit, a misguided energy policy and excessive partisanship by leaders of both parties.
“It’s not really an American way to do things,” Manchin told a crowd of small-business owners about the way Democratic and GOP leaders set up politically charged votes in an election year.
Given West Virginia’s demographics, government programs for the elderly and lower-income groups, which have been the bedrock of the Democratic Party, are critical for the state’s population. West Virginia has more people over age 65 than the national average, and both the median income of $38,380 and the 17 percent who are below the poverty line suggest the state is poorer than many others.
On top of that, just 3.4 percent of the West Virginia population is black, according to U.S. Census data, far lower than much of the rest of the country. Many believe that the president’s race is a factor among some voters here.
“I think that’s a big part of it,” said Joseph Grilli II, a 29-year-old who supports the president and works as a bartender at the Village Square Conference Center in Clarksburg, W.Va.
In an interview in nearby Morgantown, Manchin called last month’s Democratic primary — in which 41 percent voted for convicted Texas inmate Keith Judd over Obama — a “protest vote.”
“It’s basically voiced around the concern about the economy, the environment and basically how we’re getting attacked on what we do for a living,” Manchin said.
Obama officials reject accusations that coal production is under assault by the White House.
Kara Carscaden, Obama campaign spokeswoman, said the president’s stimulus plan pumped money into developing technology aimed at bolstering the use of so-called clean coal. And she said the president has charted a path to use coal, along with other energy sources, to generate 80 percent of the country’s electricity from a variety of clean sources by 2035.
“Voters know that the president is working every day to make America more energy independent and ensuring that coal has a future in our energy mix is part of that effort,” Carscaden said.
Backing up Obama are government statistics last year showing that hiring in the coal-mining sector remained strong, with more than 90,000 jobs in 2011 and nearly 60,000 jobs in Appalachia, amounting to a 15-year high.
But industry and labor officials believe that the retirement of older workers, the lower price of natural gas as an alternative fuel source, the milder winter and the impact of regulations are all reversing the uptick in hiring.
Phil Smith, spokesman with the United Mine Workers of America, said he believes all the job gains in recent years could very well be washed away by the end of 2012. And the union is so alienated from the president that Smith said it is considering sitting out its first election since Jimmy Carter’s unsuccessful reelection bid in 1980 — despite providing crucial cover for Obama in 2008.
“I don’t see how he avoids trouble with those in the coal fields,” Smith said, pointing to the union’s membership in Virginia, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico — all 2012 battlegrounds.