In PA coal country, Trump is leading
WAYNESBURG, Pa. -- Jim Popielarcheck’s father was a coal miner for 40 years, and he followed the old man underground. When it was time, his son J.W. descended into the earth.
That’s been the story for generations in Greene County, part of Appalachia in the farthest southwest corner of Pennsylvania, one of the biggest coal-producing counties in the nation and a point of blue-collar pride.
But the way of life coal has provided, and even the promise of America itself, can feel precarious here in the final weeks before the nation elects a new president.
The coal industry is shrinking, under pressure from regulations pushed by the Obama administration to cut carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, competition from cheap natural gas, and reduced demand for coal from China.
And the shift is creating a sharp political fault line between Democrat Hillary Clinton, who wants to speed the transition from fossil fuels to cleaner-burning energy, and Republican Donald Trump, who vows to increase coal production as part of an “all of the above” energy strategy.
“This country is in trouble,” said Popielarcheck, 56, a registered Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but switched to Mitt Romney in 2012 after becoming convinced that the president had declared war on coal. “Trump says, ‘Don’t worry, coal miners, I’m coming.’ Voting for that or voting for somebody who wants to close me down is not a choice.”
Greene County — and more broadly, southwestern Pennsylvania — matters in the race for the state’s 20 electoral votes. The county is overwhelmingly white and has a lower percentage of college graduates than the state as a whole, demographics that have been favorable to Trump in polling. It has gone for the Republican candidate in the past four presidential elections, though Democrats have carried the state since 1992.
Trump needs strong turnout and support in the region and in other rural areas of the state to overcome Clinton’s advantage in Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Greene County Commission Chairman Blair Zimmerman, a Democrat, figures that Trump has an edge based on his promise to “bring back coal,” which he thinks is unrealistic.
“I can say that General Motors is going to move to Greene County and put 3,000 jobs here,” said Zimmerman, a retired coal miner. “You can say whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s real. But people buy into it. They’re drinking the Kool-Aid. That’s what I think.”
Clinton gave exactly the wrong answer when asked during a March town hall in Columbus, Ohio, why working-class Appalachian whites who often vote Republican should back her instead.
“I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean, renewable energy as the key into coal country, because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she said.
The context was her promise of a $30 billion program to retrain miners and help their communities adjust, but most people remember the “out of business” part.
“We’re going to put the coal miners back to work,” Trump said at a spring rally in West Virginia, and he has pounded that message ever since in southwestern Pennsylvania and everywhere else that the fuel is mined. “Trump Digs Coal,” say the buttons and placards distributed by his campaign.
Fossil-fuel companies have amplified the message. Secure Energy for America, an industry trade group, has worked to mobilize workers in the natural gas and coal fields in southwest Pennsylvania, southeastern Ohio, and Virginia with information sessions and voter-registration drives.
The United Mine Workers, still a strong cultural and political force in coal country, does not plan to endorse in the presidential race, though it has traditionally aligned with Democrats. The union backed Obama in 2008 but was neutral in 2012.
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