Remember how Republicans always wrap themselves in the flag and talk all about supporting the troops when the Republicans are using them as cannon fodder? After they serve, however, it seems they are just moochers on the government, at least according to the chairwoman of the West Virginia Republican Party.
Richard Ojeda is a veteran running for a congressional seat in West Virginia. He’s not a typical Democrat, and may not fit many other states. But he does appear to fit West Virginia and will be with us on economic issues. He is very pro-labor. Not afraid to meet with Michael Moore.
Richard Ojeda, hard j, is a first-term lawmaker from southern West Virginia. He’s 47 years old, a husband and a father of two, and he’s won exactly one general election in his life. He is running now for the open seat in West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District, which seems like a monumentally precocious act for somebody who has served slightly more than a year in any elected office at all. But Ojeda has made his mark on the volatile politics in this state with a stunning suddenness. Though he is a Democrat in a legislature in which his party is outnumbered almost 2-to-1, he spearheaded in his freshman session the passage of a bill legalizing medical marijuana. Then, this January, he stood on the Senate floor and argued in fiery speeches that energy companies should pony up more taxes so teachers could get better benefits and pay. A strike, he warned, was not out of the question. A month later, teachers from all 55 counties walked off the job—a first in the history of the state—instantly making Ojeda the father of one of the region’s largest labor actions of the past 30 years.
In hard red, Donald Trump-loving West Virginia, Ojeda has become a kind of one-man blue wave, threatening to defy a conventional belief that the only kind of Democrat that can win big races here—or anywhere, for that matter, in Appalachia or the industrial Midwest—is somebody like Joe Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the United States Senate, a pragmatic, pro-business social conservative. Because here is Ojeda, a pro-labor, twang-talking, plainspoken populist, scrambling the state’s recent rightward shift by harkening back to a deeper, more radical vein of its rich political history. In the early 20th century, miners fought and died for higher wages and safer working conditions while wearing red bandanas and carrying Winchester rifles. Now, teachers are the new miners; in fact, in a place all but defined by its coal heritage, there are some 20,000 teachers and fewer than 12,000 miners, making the teachers—plus the 13,000 staff who walked off the job with them—by far the largest union in the state. And here, as I hustled after Ojeda into the bustling Capitol, the striking school employees weren’t armed—but many were dressed in red. And some of them had knotted around their necks those bandanas.
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His grandfather was an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who came to this part of West Virginia because coal was booming and he could make a living. His father was a nurse. Ojeda graduated from Logan High in 1988. “Where I come from, when you graduate high school, there’s only three choices—dig coal, sell dope, or join the Army. And I chose the military.” He served 24 years. He went to Korea and Honduras and Jordan and Haiti. Afghanistan. Iraq. He almost died five times, by his count, an IED blast, a couple of dud mortars, the Taliban. He earned two Bronze Stars and retired as Major Ojeda. “I’m a combat soldier,” he told me. He wants his ashes spread on Sicily Drop Zone at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, the paratroopers’ training facility, which he considers “hallowed ground.”
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His office at the Capitol, from what I could see, has two small pictures of a single politician—John F. Kennedy, taped to the front of his desktop computer. On his desk, too, is “A Coal Miner’s Prayer.” But almost all the other pieces of the décor, if that’s even the right term, are Army flags, Army plaques, Army certificates, Army paraphernalia, the boots and fatigues of fallen friends. Now, he told the teachers that kept coming in, “I fight like a daggone wild man for labor unions.” And anybody who doesn’t? “I will make their life a living hell.”
Politico: ‘He’s JFK With Tattoos and a Bench Press’ Paratrooper Richard Ojeda is redefining what it means to be a Democrat in a deeply red state.
West Virginia, for perhaps cultural and economic reasons, has many veterans. As Ojeda put it, “Where I come from, when you graduate high school, there’s only three choices—dig coal, sell dope, or join the Army. And I chose the military.” So insulting vets is probably not a good idea. And implying that receiving the pension you earned from serving in the military was some sort of undeserved “government benefit,” well, that’s about as dumb as dogshit. So the Republican Party chairwoman did it.
A Twitter spat has broken out between the West Virginia Republican Party chairwoman and a Democratic candidate for Congress that ended up with her questioning him for collecting a military pension.
The disagreement started Wednesday night when Melody Potter criticized U.S. House 3rd District candidate Richard Ojeda (oh-JED'-ah) for engaging with "liberal buddy" Michael Moore. Potter called the meeting with the filmmaker "a slap in the face to every hardworking West Virginian."
After Ojeda responded that Potter believes a "weak kneed" Republican is going to defeat him, Potter replied, "at least I do not get money from the government ole' Richard."
W.Va. Public Media
This should help his chances in a very red state.