Saving Goal Country

Billionaires Donald Trump and Jim Justice won big in West Virginia with promises of blue-collar jobs. But as the world cools on carbon, can the new governor actually put miners back to work?

- Paul M. Barrett

Jim Justice—6 feet 7 inches, 375 pounds, rumpled in the extreme—has the friendly, shambling demeanor of a high school basketball coach, which he’s been for decades. He’s also the richest man in West Virginia, with holdings in coal, timber, and tourism. This year he decided to run for governor —his second race for political office after a successful bid 17 years ago for a county school board seat. He ran as a Democrat, but kept his distance from Hillary Clinton and boasted of his friendship with Donald Trump. Justice and Trump have similarities beyond their reputations as iconoclastic billionaires: Both own real estate that’s part of an intricate web of businesses run with assistance from adult children. Both refused to disclose their tax returns. And both vowed they’d somehow revive West Virginia’s slumping coal industry.

At a typically raucous rally in May in Charleston, the state capital, Trump donned a white miner’s helmet and told an audience filled with men who wear such headgear in real life: “Get ready, because you’re going to be working your asses off!” In a radio interview around the same time, Justice said miners would soon be producing “more coal in West Virginia than has ever been mined before.”