As President Donald Trump spends time in West Virginia on Tuesday campaigning for Patrick Morrisey, a powerful coal trade group announced its support of the Republican attorney general’s bid for the Senate.
The West Virginia Coal Association, which represents more than 90 percent of the state’s underground and surface coal mine companies, had backed Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) in 2010 and 2012.
“I’m truly honored to earn the endorsement of West Virginia’s top defender of our state’s coal miners and coal companies,” said Morrisey (pictured above) in a statement.
“I’m proud to work alongside the leadership of the West Virginia Coal Association to stand up for West Virginia coal jobs and communities across our great state.”
Morrisey fought former President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan in court. The legal challenge, which involved energy companies, industry trade groups, and attorneys general from more than two dozen states, resulted in a ruling by the Supreme Court in 2016 blocking the regulations from going into effect.
“Since he took office, General Morrisey has been a tireless advocate for West Virginia’s coal industry,” Coal Association President Bill Raney said in a statement. “He fought for us against the Obama Administration, which was using every tool available to try and end coal mining in the United States. We know Patrick Morrisey will continue to fight for West Virginia coal as a member of the U.S. Senate, working in tandem with President Donald Trump.”
The Obama administration touted the Clean Power Plan as crucial for reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change and comply with the commitment that the United States made as part of the Paris climate accords.
I'm honored to have earned the endorsement of the West Virginia Coal Association. Alongside President @realDonaldTrump, we are undoing the damage Obama did to West Virginia coal. https://t.co/HfnDRkJpGV #WVsen
— AG Patrick Morrisey (@MorriseyWV) August 21, 2018
But Trump announced last year that he would pull out of the Paris agreement. On Tuesday, the administration unveiled a replacement to the Clean Power Plan. Dubbed the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, the regulation would give states more authority to craft their own plans to regulation greenhouse cases from coal-fired plants.
The president is scheduled to appear Tuesday evening at a campaign rally in the state capital of Charleston. He is sure to highlight his administration’s efforts to boost domestic energy production.
Since Trump took office, employment in the mining and logging sector has risen by about 89,000 workers. The recent uptick follows a period in which jobs contracted by 28.5 percent from a peak of 904,000 in September 2014 to the end of the Obama presidency.
In West Virginia, where coal mining is vital to the state’s history and economy, employment in mining and logging has risen by 1,800 jobs since Trump took office.
The Morrisey campaign hammered Manchin as “no friend to coal,” and cited his support of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton despite a gaffe in which she said she would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”
Said Morrisey in his statement, “While we had victories over Obama’s EPA at the U.S. Supreme Court in order to protect West Virginia coal, Sen. Manchin was supporting Hillary Clinton.”
West Virginia was Trump’s second-best state. He won 68 percent of the vote and carried every single county.
Related: Manchin’s Lackluster Primary Performance Boosts GOP Hopes
Despite losing the endorsement of mine companies, Manchin still counts the support of the United Mine Workers of America, along with a host of other labor unions that were once major powers in West Virginia politics.
Manchin long has been a top Republican target for the 2018 midterm elections. But the incumbent is a crafty politician who has won a number of elections in an increasingly conservative-leaning state by positioning himself well to the right of the national Democratic Party.
Manchin leads Morrisey by 7 percentage points in the current RealClearPolitics average of polls.
(photo credit, article image: Patrick Morissey, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)
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