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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMeet the Coal Miners Daughter Taking on Joe Manchin for Senate in West Virginia
Web Only / Features » January 11, 2018
Meet the Coal Miners Daughter Taking on Joe Manchin for Senate in West Virginia
Paula Jean Swearengin supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. Now shes challenging Big Coal and the Senates most conservative Democrat.
BY Ed Rampell
Our incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, have been coal industry servants. They havent been servants for the people and definitely havent been friends of coal miners.
On Dec. 27, 2017, self-professed hillbilly Paula Jean Swearengin flew from her hometown of West Virginia to the posh enclave of Beverly Hills, Calif., to participate in a forum of reform-minded women running for Congress. But Swearengin, who is running in the Democratic primary for West Virginia Senate against incumbent Joe Manchin, has more in common with feisty fictional Southern union organizer Norma Rae than with the Clampetts of Beverly Hillbillies.
Unlike the oil rich Clampetts who struck black gold on their land, Swearengin is critical of the energy industry, especially coal, which she told the forums standing room-only crowd had led to her relatives deaths by way of black lung disease.
I saw my grandfather suffocate to death, thundered the 43-year-old single mother of four. Im not going to worship a black rock.
The forum, billed as a Nearly New Years Revolution Party, was organized by the Justice Democrats, a federal political action committee which has endorsed 51 Senate and House candidates, including Swearengin, who all oppose the Democratic Partys corporate wing and have pledged not to take donations from corporations and SuperPACs.
In the May 8 primary, Swearengin will go up against Manchin, a conservative Democrat and longtime ally of the coal industry who voted for Scott Pruitt, President Trumps pick to head the EPA, and supported leaving the Paris Climate Treaty. Swearengin, meanwhile, is running on a platform of single-payer healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, free public college tuition and an end to fracking and mountaintop removal.
In this candid conversation, Swearengin, discusses her dark horse candidacy, her views on a Green New Deal, socialism, economic justice and much more.
more...
http://inthesetimes.com/article/20828/paula-jean-swearengin-joe-manchin-senate-west-virginia
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Meet the Coal Miners Daughter Taking on Joe Manchin for Senate in West Virginia (Original Post)
babylonsister
Jan 2018
OP
shenmue
(38,506 posts)1. I'd vote for her if I lived there :)
TheDebbieDee
(11,119 posts)2. Not crazy about conservadem Sen Manchin! Not crazy about
how his wife and daughter engineered windfall profits for the daughters pharmaceutical company by orchestrating legislation nationwide to require schools to keep those emergency anaphylactic shock injection pens on hand, then jacking up the price 700%!
ETA: I'm not from West Virginia - I'm from Missouri...
PragmaticDem
(320 posts)3. Well she can give it a shot but it is WV.
babylonsister
(171,090 posts)8. That's what they said about Alabama. nt
PragmaticDem
(320 posts)9. True but she is going up against a popular Democrat.
The situation is different, but it is worth a shot to get her name out there.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)4. She would do well to focus on WV's attempt at a technology alley.
And maybe push for R&D expansion at WVU
Jake Stern
(3,145 posts)5. This is going to be entertaining
democrank
(11,103 posts)6. What an impressive alternative to Manchin.
I'd vote for her if I could.
secondwind
(16,903 posts)7. She sounds like my type of candidate.
doc03
(35,364 posts)10. Convicted criminal Don Blankenship is also running as a Republican. Blankenship's
ads are laughable. One guy is talking about what a great man he is, what a great boss he
was and how great he was with mine safety it is like he should made Saint Don Blankenship.