West Virginia’s Democratic governor Jim Justice is expected to announce he is changing parties at a rally Thursday night with President Donald Trump, after Trump promised earlier in the day “a very big announcement” was to come during the event. The New York Times was first to report the news.
Justice, a political neophyte and billionaire, was elected as a conservative Democrat in 2016 even as Trump carried the state by 42 percentage points against Hillary Clinton. Justice’s status as a coal magnate inoculated him against voters’ fear of the Democratic party’s “war on coal.”
His campaign focused more on his own wealth and business experience than on his policy stances. During the election, OnTheIssues.org slapped Justice with an “IFFY” award, which they present to candidates who “refuse to provide voters with information on what they believe and how they will legislate.” As Politico Magazine noted in September, “He’s flip-flopped between the two major parties, giving money to both and changing his registration, most recently in February 2015, when he became a Democrat.”
Since his election, Justice has denounced budget cuts passed by Republican lawmakers and called for increases in sales and business taxes to raise $450 million in government revenues. Recently, he has pushed the legislature to cut taxes for military veterans and raise taxes on infrastructure contractors to fund programs aimed at the state’s opioids epidemic.
“That 5 percent fee, we need to bucket every dime of that to combat the drug epidemic,” Justice said recently. “We could have fixed the drug epidemic in this state with treatment facilities and social workers and law enforcement and on and on and on. You can’t fix that problem that you’re talking about with a band aid and an aspirin. You can’t do it.”
Justice has bragged about his friendly relationship with the Trump family. He called the president’s visit to this year’s Boy Scout jamboree, held southeast of Charleston, a “tremendous honor.”
“A visit from President Trump will be the cherry on top of this year’s successful Boy Scout Jamboree,” he said in a release.
