Trump keeps power in coal country
Miners still backing president despite the industry’s woes
WAYNESBURG, Pa. — More than 600 feet underground in the Appalachian region of southwestern Pennsylvania, it’s almost like John Morecraft, a 45-year-old history teacher turned coal miner, is back in a classroom.
Several of his former high school students work in the mine, still calling him Mr. Morecraft, or coach. Some of the older men who never got much of an education look to him to explain current events.
And when it comes to presidential politics these days, in the words of another miner, “It’s pretty much Trump all the way.”
During the grinding impeachment process, Morecraft said, the miners were “watching it very closely. They’re passionate about it. And angry about what’s going on.”
On the surface, that’s no surprise. In 2016, Donald Trump won a whopping 68% of the votes here in Greene County, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 28%.
But as recently as 2008, Barack Obama and John McCain split the vote evenly in the county, which has four working coal mines and a population of about 36,000. And before that, the area was a dependable Democratic stronghold in the state.
What lies beneath the enormous shift over the last decade — and its endurance despite Trump’s mostly failed promises to bring back coal — contains a somber warning for Democrats, and not just in coal country.
Many voters here — and likely in many other areas across the country — see the Democrats as a party seemingly out of touch with their everyday interests and concerns.
While that indictment may not be entirely fair or representative of every miner, the overall impression here is of a party that cares about other people, not them, whether the issue is immigration, student debt or universal health coverage. Greene County’s population is 1% foreign-born, less than one-fifth have college degrees and 6% don’t have medical insurance.
Then there’s the environmental issue. Some of the miners will concede that climate change may well be an enormous problem, and ending use of fossil fuels may be desirable, even necessary. But what happens to them and thousands of others whose jobs and livelihoods depend on it right now? What do the Democrats offer on that?
Tony Brnusak, a lifelong Democrat who heads the United Mine Workers local representing 560 workers at the Cumberland mine in Greene County, rails against Trump for not stopping the closure of coalfired power plants, which Trump the candidate said he would do.
“He was blowing smoke then and he’s doing it again,” said Brnusak.
But the 42-year veteran of Cumberland added: “The Democrats keep shooting themselves in the foot saying they’re going to kill coal.”
So even though Trump has failed to revive coal mining, as he promised when strong support here and in other rural areas was key to his narrow victory in this swing state in 2016, there’s little doubt inside the Bailey mine about whom Morecraft and most of the 600 workers will be backing in November.
Consider the reasoning of Jake Kehoe, at 28 one of the younger workers at Bailey.
When he got out of high school and began looking for work, he found mostly dead-end jobs.
Then, seven years ago he landed a mining job. Last year, with overtime, he pulled down $115,000.
Kehoe knows the reality of a declining coal industry: “This is one of those careers, one day it’s here and tomorrow might not be,” he said.
But for now, Kehoe is living well with his wife and two young children in Carmichaels, a town of about 500 in Greene County that for decades has hosted a Bituminous Coal Show in the summer, complete with a mine-rescue competition and the crowning of the annual Coal Queen.
“Actually I didn’t vote until the last election, and it’s the first time I’m a Republican,” Kehoe said, adding that he’s sure to cast his support for Trump in November.
As Kehoe said, it’s not that he doesn’t understand the longterm uncertainties of the coal industry.
Although Trump signed a bill last year that bailed out retired mine workers’ pensions, and has cut back on mine inspections and other environmental regulations to try to help coal, they’ve not begun to reverse decades of coal mining decline in the U.S.
The reality is market forces, along with changes in energy production and environmental concerns, have foiled Trump’s best efforts. And there’s little he can do about it.
Coal-burning power plants have continued to close or face weakening demand, thanks to cheaper, cleaner natural gas and growing use of renewable energy sources. Last year alone, eight coal producers filed for bankruptcy and the Energy Department
is projecting coal’s share of power generation to fall to 22% this year, down from more than 40% at one time.
That’s the long-term reality. The voters in Greene County live in the here and now.
Employment at the Bailey mine has been fairly stable over the last several years. It’s helped that it’s also an efficient producer of coal for steelmaking, some of which is hauled by rail to Baltimore and shipped to overseas markets.
The recent U.S.-China trade deal held out the promise that the Chinese could buy a lot more American coal, along with crude oil and liquid natural gas, as part of Beijing’s promise to ramp up U.S. imports.
Yet analysts and industry executives say transportation costs, capacity at U.S. ports and other competitive factors make a big increase in exports unlikely, especially to Asia. Australia, Indonesia, Russia and China all produce plenty of coal.
“He has offered a lot of hope, and hope does not — no pun intended — trump the marketplace,” said Dennis Wamsted, an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
But such analysis doesn’t seem to cut it here in Greene County, where Bailey and nearby mines make it one of the nation’s largest coal-producing areas.
What counts is that Trump says he’s concerned about local voters’ problems and keeps announcing — and sometimes undertaking — schemes that he says will help them.
In the eyes of his supporters, Trump may not have solutions, but he looks like he’s trying. He’s on their side, they feel, he never backs down, and he’s a brawler, which has some appeal to men who spend their days doing hard, dangerous work.
If anything, the political tide has turned even stronger in Trump’s favor over the last three years. At the end of 2016, Democrats accounted for 55% of registered voters; that’s since fallen to 49%.