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Coal states changing the way they vote

This week President Barack Obama ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to impose new rules and regulations on power plant carbon emissions – an order many speculate will ruin the U.S. coal industry. The new rules sparked quick and angry reaction as Republican leadership in the House and Senate (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from the coal state of Kentucky and House Speaker John Boehner from the coal state of Ohio), both promised to fight the rules, saying the regulations would be devastating to hard working Americans.

The news brought back to me visions I shared with readers last fall in a column after my wife and I returned to areas we lived over the years – western Pennsylvania and Wheeling, W.Va.

I wonder this week how residents in those parts are feeling about President Obama and his 2008 campaign slogans of “Hope” and “Change we can believe in.”

I bet this is not the change those residents were expecting. And, I’m sure this week’s news deflated all hope for many of them.

History will show that President John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 thanks to West Virginia voters and coal miners, who overcame concerns with his religion and voted for him based on his economic policies.

This ruling all but destroys a loyalty voters developed to mostly Democrat candidates ever since. Like it or not the ruling will have a huge impact on voters in at least six coal-rich states east of the Mississippi, and four to six west of the Mississippi.

I share with you a portion of that column from November of last year.

” Earlier this year my wife and I visited family and friends back in the Ohio Valley. In a column many months ago I shared with readers how the oil and gas industry was mushrooming everywhere we went in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio.

What I did not share at that time was another phenomenon that was evident, but which I dismissed at the time, and that was the numbers of “Anti-Obama” signs that dotted the hills of coal country. The signs seemed everywhere – people’s front porches, hillsides and bumper stickers.

As I said I didn’t give it much thought until Wednesday, as I read post-election stories from around the country and I thought of two particular races – Senate races in Kentucky and West Virginia – and how those signs took on extra significance.

As a story in the Washington Examiner said this week about those races, for residents in those states it was all about “coal, guns and freedom.”

I don’t doubt that for a minute. What I do find interesting, however, is how residents – most of whom have family members in the United Mine Workers – would now be voting Republican. UMW pioneers would be beside themselves at the mere thought of such an atrocity.

Three decades ago I was the coal reporter in Wheeling, W.Va., and covered the industry and UMW in great detail. As far as I’m concerned, the UMW was one of the most powerful unions in the country at that time and its leaders ruled with iron-clad efficiency. If they ordered something to happen, it happened, no questions asked. The labor disputes I covered at the time were vintage labor struggles of that day, including intimidation, occasional violence and, when necessary, a stray bullet here or there as an exclamation point.

At that time District 6 of the UMW, of which I covered, was the most influential and powerful district in the nation. And, if you told me that someday a Richard Trumka, Tony Bumbico or Jim Hepe would be voting for a Republican senator, I would have laughed for hours.

Not so anymore.

Joe Manchin, Democrat U.S. senator from West Virginia, in a post-election assessment, said coal workers in his state felt betrayed by President Barack Obama and his “war on coal.” They blame the president, Manchin said, for losing their jobs and destroying their way of life. In essence, they feel betrayed and in two states at least this week, that emotion was evident as words on a sign translated directly to votes on the ballot.”

Bill Speer can be reached via email at bspeer@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 354-3111 ext. 331. Follow Bill on Twitter @billspeer13. Read his blog, More BS?(Bill Speer) at www.thealpenanews.com.

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