HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A suit and tie isn’t Richard Ojeda’s preferred attire.
He’d rather be wearing combat boots, cargo shorts, and a T-shirt, but on this warm, rainy West Virginia day, Ojeda’s attending a forum on revitalizing the Appalachian economy, so he’s in a suit. And if the tattooed ex-Army paratrooper is elected to Congress in November, he’ll have to get used to it.
Ojeda, a Democratic state senator, is attempting the unthinkable: running in a GOP-held district that went for President Trump by 50 points in 2016. He’s up against Republican Carol Miller, whose family ties run deep in West Virginia politics and who has the money to write herself a check whenever needed.
But Ojeda loves the fight. He eagerly talks of a day when he can challenge House members in Washington to on-the-spot debates broadcast on Facebook. Few, if any, would take him up on the offer.
“I’d rather fight than eat,” Ojeda says. In that moment, he’s referring to West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice who had just attacked him while standing on stage next to Trump at a rally 50 miles east in Charleston.
Fighting defines Ojeda’s candidacy. He fought for his life after being physically beaten during his second run for state senator in 2016. He fought alongside teachers striking across the state for better pay. “We’ve had 30 minutes of an absolute shitshow,” Ojeda says in a Facebook live video bashing politicians during the strike earlier this year.
He’s fought alongside steelworkers who were locked out of their factories. And if elected, he wants to fight for coal miner pensions and funding to combat the opioid crisis, which has hit West Virginia harder than any state. It’s a crisis that’s even touched his campaign — multiple staffers have lost friends to the epidemic; one such staffer got the news their friend had overdosed the day of the economic forum.
“Nobody else is doing anything to help us and these people deserve the right to be able to survive,” Ojeda said.
Far from a cookie-cutter Democrat, Ojeda is unapologetic about his positions. He may regret voting for Trump in 2016 but he says the president’s policies have helped the coal industry in the district.
Ojeda’s philosophy is simple when it comes to Trump, or really any leader in Washington: “If he has a good idea I’ll support it. If he don’t, I won’t.”
He supports Trump’s action to aide coal miners, but disagrees with the president on immigration, the GOP tax plan, and a slew of other issues. He supports the president’s recent decision to roll back the Obama-era carbon regulations on power plants. But, he admits, coal won’t be around forever, and West Virginia needs to diversify its economy.
“We need to do more in terms of wind and solar,” said Ojeda. “There’s metallurgical coal, used to make, create steel. Let us mine metallurgical coal.”
Though Ojeda’s a relative newcomer to politics, breaking the mold that pundits expect a coal-country Democrat to stick to, he fits into an ever-growing cast of Democratic candidates who have embraced their outsider status. Ojeda, like Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Katie Hill in California, and even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York are unvarnished, first-time candidates. And some were not welcomed by the party’s establishment at the outset. Ojeda and Ocasio-Cortez may represent different ends of the Democratic Party on certain issues, but they’re playing by their own rules, unafraid to communicate directly to voters via Twitter, or spontaneous Facebook videos in a way current lawmakers don’t.
“He’s playing to the same populist theme that Trump plays on but from the other end,” said former Rep. Nick Rahall, a Democrat. “He’s not a puppet of the coal industry but he’s not turning his back on the coal miner by any stretch of the imagination.”
Rahall held the 3rd District seat for 38 years, losing in 2014. Ojeda challenged Rahall in the primary back then, and lost, but the former congressman remembers it well.
Ojeda is pushing the same message now that he did in 2014, Rahall said, and it’s resonating.
“When he ran against me four years ago, he called every politician corrupt,” Rahall said. “I don’t think he made one single exception.”
The district’s history of voting for Democrats is one reason why Ojeda’s in play, says Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the nonpartisan election tracker, Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
“Even though the Democratic Party is clearly on decline in West Virginia, Ojeda is a compelling candidate,” said Kondik. “In most places a district the president won by 40 to 50 points would not be even on the remotest Democratic radar and yet because of West Virginia’s frankly kind of odd voting these days [it is].”
Ojeda’s success may look strange to those on the outside, but it makes perfect sense to West Virginia Democrats, who admit their state, especially the 3rd District, engages in a heavy amount of ticket-splitting.
To Joyce Clark, Ojeda is a “blue collar Obama.” The Huntington city council member rejects the idea that Trump has a grip on Appalachia. She comes from a family of West Virginia miners and factory workers.
“Trump gave coal miners all this big fury and bluster, and yes coal has come back to some extent, but nothing like it was and it’s never going to be like it was,” Clark said. “He sold these folks a bill of goods, but I think a lot of them are seeing now he couldn’t deliver.”
Ojeda is strongest in the southern rural parts of the district, south of Huntington. Though he expects he’ll win Huntington too, despite his opponent’s roots in the town.
“I’m looking at this like it’s a combat deployment: You get off the plane, you go nonstop until you get back on the plane and go home,” said Ojeda. “Get some.”
