Coal Baron. Ex-Con. Senator?

In West Virginia, Don Blankenship’s bid for the Senate is more personal than political

- Tim Loh

On a cold, rainy night in West Virginia coal country this winter, Don Blankenship glares out at a half-empty conference room at the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington. For almost an hour, the ex-coal executive and ex-con reads off a teleprompter, doing his best impression of a political candidate. For a big man, Blankenship has a surprisingly soft voice; his message is anything but. He talks of his years of union- busting, the folly of environmental regulation, and the twin evils of illegal immigration and opioid addiction— blaming the first for causing the second. Throughout, he never strays far from the true target of his ire: Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. Blankenship blames Manchin not only for much of what’s wrong with West Virginia, but also for helping put him behind bars.

In 2016 the former hard-charging chief executive officer of Massey Energy Co. went to federal prison for conspiring to evade safety laws in the lead-up to the worst coal mine disaster in a generation—a 2010 explosion at Upper Big Branch Mine that killed 29 miners. Manchin, the governor at the time, commissioned an independent probe that reached blistering conclusions about Blankenship’s tight grip over Massey and did a lot to seal public opinion about his role in the disaster. Years later, as federal prosecutors zeroed in on Blankenship, Manchin, by then a senator, said on national TV that the ex-coal boss had “blood on his hands.”