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Political Note #301 Ben Solango Governor West Virginia
2020 General Election
It happens. A state that is overwhelmingly oriented toward one party elects a governor from the other party. Massachusetts has a Republican Governor. So does Vermont. Louisiana has a Democratic Governor. West Virginia could elect a Democratic Governor. In fact, West Virginia elected a kind of Democratic Governor in 2016. Then he changed his party.
West Virginia could elect another Democratic Governor in2020 – Ben Solango. He will not change his party if elected Governor. He just won the Democratic primary 39-33 over a more reformist candidate.
If Ben Solango https://www.bensalango.com is not a reformer, what is he? He’s a lawyer. He represents plaintiffs. Describing them as representative of his work, his law firm, Preston and Solango, lists 23 cases in which plaintiffs were awarded at least a million dollars. Personal injury. Medical negligence or malpractice. Wrongful discharge. Nursing home neglect. Automobile and trucking accidents.
That was his work. It made him a rich man. Ben Solango did not start out rich. He grew up in West Virginia in a two bedroom mobile home. His parents struggled, but started a business. The kids worked. Ben worked at the area Kroger. After graduating high school, he went to West Virginia University and then to West Virginia College of Law.
While prospering as a lawyer, Ben Solango has made himself into a pretty good example of what a political candidate should look like. He is married with two sons and, he says, two dogs. He wife is a county prosecutor who was elected as a County Circuit judge in 2018. He coaches youth soccer. He hikes, bikes, hunts, runs, and climbs mountains.
Ben Solango got himself appointed as a Kanawha County Commissioner (That’s Charleston) in 2017. He was elected in 2018. Asked what he was proud of during his tenure as Commissioner, he talked about building the Shawnee Sports Complex. The Sports complex is a destination. People come for events, stay in local hotels, eat in local restaurants. He could point to US Youth soccer regional championships being played at the complex and the opportunities for local youth to play in the fields as well.
Other successes he points to are providing 12 weeks of paid family leave for workers, higher pay for first responders, and a cleared waitlist for seniors who needed hot meals.
The West Virginia Ben Solango would like to lead has few minorities. 93% of the people in West Virginia are white. 3.5% are African American. 70% of the people in West Virginia are Protestants. Another 18% are unaffiliated with any Church. 8% of West Virginians are Roman Catholic. At 16%, more West Virginians are over 65 years old than any state other than Florida.
Demographically, the state West Virginia resembles most is Maine – which is the whitest state in the country and has 15.9% of its population over 65 years of age. West Virginia has fewer foreign-born residents at 1.1% of its population than any other state in the country. West Virginians are not highly schooled. Fewer West Virginians have a college education than in any other state. West Virginia is not prosperous. 19% of the population lives under the poverty line. At just over $44,000, West Virginia’s median household income is lower than any other state in the country. The largest employer in the state is Walmart.
The Governor, Jim Justice, has been described as West Virginia’s only billionaire (His net worth is ten times the net worth of former Governor and US Senator Jay Rockefeller). He could be described as an AFOD, Aspiring Friend of Donald. The son of a rich man, he founded Bluestone Farms, and inherited Bluestone Industries and Bluestone Coal Corporation from his father. He’s a golfer. He initially went to the University of Tennessee on a golf scholarship, but left and graduated from Marshall in West Virginia. He is building a mountain top golf course. He did very well doing business with the Russians. He sold some of his coal business to a Russian company in 2009 for $568 million. In 2015, after the price of coal disappeared and the Russians closed the mines, he bought them back for $5 million. He opened some of the mines and hired 200 miners.
He has not been a model businessman. It has been reported that his mining companies owe $15 million to six states for taxes and mining fees. In 2020, companies he owned agreed to pay $5 million in safety fines.
He wasn’t a model Democrat either. He had been a registered Republican for years, but switched parties to run for governor as a Democrat. He switched back to being a Republican at a West Virginia rally for Donald Trump, explaining he could not be a Democrat and support Trump. He speaks about opponents with harsh language that resembles Trump’s language. Justice remains connected with Trump and is proud that he speaks to Trump frequently. He does differ from Trump in one important way. When he says he will donate money to a charitable cause, he actually donates the money to a charitable cause.
In 2020, Jim Justice’s closeness with Trump might be a plus factor in his effort to be reelected. While Americans as a whole disapprove of the job Trump is doing by a 55-41 margin, that is not true of everyone. Among people 65 and older, Trump is approved by a small margin 50-48. Among Whites, Trump is approved by a slightly larger margin 50-46. West Virginia, which is overwhelmingly white and has the second highest percentage of people 65 and older, approves of the job that Trump is doing by a larger margin than any other state, 65-31.
Ben Solango has a job ahead of him. He has a lot of union support. He’s got the support of West Virginia’s conservative Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin. His approach to health care includes a plan to preserve rural hospitals.
[He says he] “will fight to guarantee access to healthcare for rural and underserved communities…. save our rural hospitals, protect healthcare jobs, and ensure that West Virginians have access to affordable health care.” He promises to prevent hospital closures before they happen.
Ben Solango says he would rather spend money to help hospitals than create an intermediate appellate court at a cost of $6.5 million, than to eliminate the business inventory tax losing $100 million in revenue, or to eliminate the personal property tax losing $200 million – all Jim Justice proposals.
Can Ben Solango make a dent? He can pound away at issues like health care and education and jobs (Jim Justice’s 200 mining jobs does not make a dent). He can speak about himself as a self-made man who has worked for the “little guy.” He can’t tie his opponent to Trump – at least he can’t do that as a way to win. His best case is the one that gives us Republican governors of Massachusetts and Vermont and a Democratic governor of Louisiana. Offset the power of an overwhelming majority of the majority party. Keep things on the straight and narrow. Keep the legislators honest. Help Ben Solango https://www.bensalango.com make that case and get to do that job.
There are only 11 Governorships up for election in 2020.
One of them is a toss up – Montana. We don’t know who the candidates will be yet.
One of them leans Democratic (according to the Cook Report). Cooper in North Carolina is a Lean Democrat. We’ve written about him already.
Two are solidly Democratic – Delaware and Washington where incumbents don’t face much of a challenge
Four are solidly Republican – Indiana, North Dakota, Utah (even though the Republican candidate has not yet been chosen) and, according to Cook, West Virginia.
Three are Likely Republican – New Hampshire, Missouri (I have already written urging you to support ….) and Vermont (I wrote urging support for ….. before there were any other Democratic candidates.
Notwithstanding Cook, consider West Virginia in the Likely Republican category, a tough sell for Democrat Ben Solango. He has his own source of revenue, is capable of raising more, and is the kind of candidate who can appeal to West Virginians.
