Hello! And welcome to another edition of Inside The Newsroom. Today’s guest is… the formidable Paula Jean Swearengin, star of the Netflix documentary Knock Down The House and current candidate for U.S. Senate from the great state of West Virginia. Paula Jean is the daughter of a long line of coal miners and has lived in the Mountain State all her life. And she’s also recently become a grandmother! She’s thus seen the destruction the coal industry has done to her people for generations, as well as how the opioid crisis ravaged her friends first hand. So, let’s tuck into an important episode, but first, some interesting articles. Enjoy 🤓
What’s New?
Dallas Morning News — The DMN broke with tradition this week by announcing that it won’t be endorsing anyone for president. Fuck yeah!
Jeff Bezos — The Amazon CEO pledged $10bn to climate change initiatives, though it was met with criticism that it wasn’t enough. Here’s a list of the largest climate change pledges so far — Bezos will be the third
Taylor Swift — How the Queen of Music became the Queen of the Breakup Song
Covering Bloomberg — How does a news organization cover a presidential candidate when said candidate is their boss?
Paula Jean 👇
Who Is Paula Jean Swearengin?
Paula Jean was born in Mullens, West Virginia, a town of about 1,350 people whose population has decreased by a third since 1990. Declining populations are all too common across the state, and will result in the state losing one electoral vote in the presidential election. Paula Jean burst onto the political scene in 2018 when she grabbed 30 percent of the vote from incumbent U.S. senator and moderate Democrat Joe Manchin in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. This came two years after Bernie Sanders won 51 percent of the vote in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary to Hillary Clinton’s 36 percent, so clearly there’s a yearning for the progressive brand of politics Paula Jean represents.
This time around Paula Jean faces another tough Democratic primary on May 12 against Richard Ojeda, a former state senator and apparently a brief candidate for president 🤷♂ and Richie Robb, former mayor of South Charleston and not a former presidential candidate. The winner of the primary will face incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito in November.
Who is Shelley Moore Capito?
Incumbent Republican Shelley Moore Capito has been junior U.S. Senator from West Virginia since 2015, when she defeated then Democratic Secretary of State Natalie Tennant. She secured 62 percent of the vote, the largest victory margin for a Republican running in a statewide race in state history (more on the weirdness of West Virginia’s voting history later). Back then, Capito was seen as too liberal for the Tea Party, but overcame stiff opposition from anti-establishment conservatives.
Since then, Capito has very much fulfilled the expectation of being a rank and file Republican, voting with Donald Trump 95.7 percent of the time. Though, to be fair, which is incredibly hard to do when talking about the GOP, Capito did come to the defense of FBI Director Christopher Wray back in December when Trump went on one of his delightful Twitter tirades. But that’s where the fairness ends. Capito has received $3.5 million in donations from the likes of Delta Air Lines, private prison operator GEO Group and billion-dollar hedge fund Elliot Management, according to Open Secrets. Because of the issues effecting West Virginia and its voting past, if Paula Jean can win the Democratic primary, she could give Capito a legitimate challenge, if not cause a shock upset.
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West Virginia’s Weird Voting Record
Okay, to the weirdness! At the presidential level, West Virginia is unequivocally a red state — the GOP has won West Virginia every election since 2000 when George W. Bush won 51.9 percent of the vote, a victory margin of 6.3 percent over Al Gore. The Republican vote share has steadily increased since then, and in 2016 Trump claimed 68.6 percent of votes, 42.1 points better than Clinton. But move on down the ticket to U.S. senators, and it’s a completely different picture.
Remarkably, Capito is the only Republican U.S. Senator to serve the state since 1958. No for real, she is. Ever since Robert Byrd and Jennings Randolph were both elected, five Democrats have been elected compared to a single Republican. Even further down the ticket and Jim Justice is the first conservative governor since 2001, but only because he switched from the Democrats in 2017. Then there’s the West Virginia Senate, which Democrats have historically controlled, but is where Republicans currently hold 20 of the 34 seats, many of which were won as part of the Trump-fuelled red wave from 2016. Looking ahead to November and it’s bloody hard to know which way the state will go. Capito is a solid bet, according to The Cook Political Report, but with a growing progressive wave on the left, and a scandal-ridden president on the right, West Virginia isn’t a foregone conclusion.
Coal Country: West Virginia’s Coal and Addiction Problem
The coal mining industry employed more than 150,000 people in West Virginia during its peak in the mid 20th century — almost 10 percent of the state — and, through its unions, were closely aligned with Democrats, many of whom came from similar working class backgrounds. These days between 10,000 and 20,000 miners remain, as the threat of climate change and automation have massacred the industry. But coal is still mined — West Virginians remarkably produced more coal in 2010 than in the early 1950s, leaving behind a trail of deadly problems.
The daughter of a coal miner herself, Paula Jean knows all too well the consequences of being a miner, as well as the massive employment hole the lack of reinvestment in the state has caused. Her younger sister was born with a cyst on the base of her brain, and her grandfather died in 2001 from black lung after decades of working in an underground mine. West Virginia now has an unemployment rate of 5 percent, the fourth highest in the U.S., which goes against everything most blue collar West Virginians have known. The state is ready to work. What they need is a new generation of investment in green and renewable energy jobs that spark the state’s GDP, which is again one of the worst in the nation.
More importantly, though, green energy will significantly decrease the astronomical cancer mortality rate in the state — 180 in every 100,000 West Virginians die from cancer every year, third most in the U.S. That leads us to the state’s addiction problem, where the opioid crisis has hit the hardest. Once again, large corporations are literally killing West Virginians, like this town of 3,000 where millions of opioid pills were prescribed. Of all 50 states, West Virginia has been ravaged more than any other state. Paula Jean is for Medicare For All, which is expensive, but should it really be refused at the expense of thousands of lives?
Credit: CDC
I’ll leave you with this short doc giving a devastating outlook of the fight between coal and green energy in the state…
Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats
Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats are political action committees founded by former volunteer staffers of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. Their shared aim is to get progressive Democrats elected to Congress, and are the organizations behind the rise of the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. Paula Jean was first asked by BNC to run, who could be responsible for another wave of progressive candidates elected in 2020. I’ll leave you with the trailer to Knock Down The House, which follows AOC and Paula Jean in their respective 2018 primary races, as well as 2020 candidate lists for Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats.
Last Week…
#63 — Brian Klaas (Power Corrupts) on the history of dark propaganda
… Next Week
I’ll have Francesca Fiorentini on the pod. Francesca is a comedian and correspondent for the likes of MSNBC, AJ+ and NatGeo simultaneously making people laugh and more informed.
Job Corner
Staying on brand this week, I’ve listed below a handful of current openings from Politico…
#64 — Paula Jean Swearengin (U.S. Senate)