Blue-Collar Voters Laud Trump for Standing Behind Coal Industry
As a laid-off coal mine electrician, Nolan Triplett may never return to the industry that once powered America and offered generations of Appalachians a chance at a middle class life.
But he still backs the president who four years ago donned a miner’s helmet at a West Virginia campaign rally and vowed to save coal.
“Even if I don’t go back to this industry, I’m still with him,” said Triplett, 41, outside a mine worker certification office in Danville, a town of about 700 people along the Little Coal River in Boone County south of Charleston.
Many West Virginians applaud President Donald Trump’s efforts to reinvigorate the coal industry and remain loyal as he seeks a second term.
Triplett and other voters say they are attracted to his “America First” slogan and pro-life stance, and figure he’s the only one standing in the way of the entire industry shutting down.
“He’s done good for this country all around,” according to Triplett, who lost his last mine job when the pandemic lockdowns hit.
Next to Triplett stood Ronnie Starr, who lives near the Kentucky border in Mingo County. He’s had to move as far as Alabama to find work as a mine electrician since he started in the early 2000s, and is out of a job now.
He said the last Democrat he voted for was Bill Clinton, and he enthusiastically supports Trump.
“You got the right president, things go good,” Starr, 43, said.
“And you got one group that hates us with a passion and would rather see us starve out and die,” Triplett cut in, “then you get another group that supports us, so it’s a roller coaster.”
While many won’t forgive President Barack Obama for pushing to curtail coal, Craig Bratcher, a Boone County commissioner, said the decline started before his inauguration.
Since 2014, West Virginia has lost nearly a third of its remaining full-time coal jobs as production declines, starving local governments of revenue.
Nationally, cheap natural gas is beating coal on the market and coal-powered plants are closing. Coal consumption decreased nearly 15 percent in 2019, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
In 2016, the federal agency reported the industry’s worst jobs record since it began collecting this data in 1978, showing a yearly average of 51,795 employees at U.S. coal mines.
Employment increased by 1.9 percent as of 2019.
“The coal jobs did not come back as the president promised,” U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a rare Democrat still thriving in West Virginia, said. “The markets have shifted.”
Richard Lalonde, a registered Democrat, still works at 82 inside a thrift shop he and his wife own in Madison. After supporting Trump in 2016, he’s blunt about coal’s promise for his town’s economy.
“It’s never going to be like the way it was before,” he said. “Around here it’s done.”
That skepticism about the future of the coal industry is widespread, even among Republican officeholders.
“I don’t think anyone thinks it’s a growth industry,” Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Capito said. “What we’ve gotten with the president is a stabilization of the coal industry.”
Anthony Starkey, a retired miner in Danville, said Trump earned his vote again by signing a bill last year to save the pensions of some retired coal workers, including his own.
Starkey, 62, said he was a Democrat all the years he worked as a miner, starting at about 17 in the early 1980s. He retired early at 38, drawing from a pension that nearly got wiped out as coal companies that paid into the fund went bankrupt.
The relief Trump signed replaced corporate spending with $10 billion in public dollars to rescue pensions for 92,000 retirees and health benefits for 13,000.
“If he was a typical Republican, he would not have signed that bill,” Starkey said.
“He’s a typical New Yorker, he’s arrogant. Whether you love him or hate him, he’s done what he’s said he’s going to do.”
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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