Mountain State Matters

The United Mine Workers of America endorsed Obama today. This follows Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s (D-W.Va.) Obama endorsement yesterday and Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-W.Va.) in February.

I wonder if the UMWA’s endorsement will help Obama’s popularity in a state in which he was so soundly defeated.

So, much has been made of the fact that Hillary won Tuesday’s democratic primary in West Virginia. The New York Times ran a story on it, blaming race as a huge factor.

The number of white Democratic voters who said that race influenced their choice on Tuesday was among the highest recorded in voter surveys in the Clinton-Obama nomination fight. Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said that race was an important factor in their vote, and more than 8 in 10 of them backed Mrs. Clinton, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls.

I wonder if it’s fair to compare West Virginia to any of the other races, as Obama definitely gave the state up to Hillary and was noticeably absent in the days leading up to the primary. Although 80 percent of the state backed Hillary, only 20 percent said race played a factor in their vote. I don’t think this is significant enough to paint WV voters as racist hillbillies.

Josh Marshall did a nice analysis of Obama’s troubles in Appalachia in Talking Points Memo.

Let me offer a series of overlapping explanations. First, some basic demographics. It’s widely accepted that Hillary Clinton does better with older voters, less educated voters and white voters. These demographics perfectly match West Virginia — and, more loosely, the entire Appalachian region. A few key points from tonight’s exit polls demonstrate the point: 4 out of 10 voters were over 60 years of age. 7 out of 10 lacked a college degree — the highest proportion of any electorate in the country. And 95% of the electorate was white.

Basically you have a state that is made up almost exclusively of Clinton’s voters. But there’s a deeper historical explanation that we have to apply as well — one nicely illustrated by the origins of West Virginia itself.

At least one West Virginia voter isn’t happy with Hillary for her campaigning in the state. In an open letter to Hillary Clinton on his blog, Tim Graves accuses Hillary of using the suspiciousness of West Virginians against them. While I haven’t seen any proof that Hillary actually “fanned the flames of racism,” it’s an interesting letter.

A Tennessee blogger posted this to comment on tomorrow’s primary in West Virginia. (For those of you who don’t want to click on the link, it’s a clip from the movie Deliverance.) Because clearly the country should be terrified that the ignorant rednecks that comprise the entire population of West Virginia will be playing a part in choosing the Democratic presidential candidate.

Here’s an elegant rebuttal from another Tennessee blogger.

To add one more element to the discussion of Hillary’s supporters all being racist, here’s a funny SNL sketch about it:

I read in a post on West Virginia Blue that Emmett Pugh, the mayor of Beckley, officially endorsed Obama on Monday. Quoting from an e-mail, the blog quoted Pugh as saying:

“Barack Obama is the only candidate who can restore people’s trust and faith in government. Washington is rife with partisan politics and we need change. We need to fix what’s wrong with the country and Senator Obama understands you need Democrats, Independents and Republicans to do it.”

Obama has built his campaign around change. However, no matter what Pugh says, change may not be the catchword that earns Obama votes in West Virginia.

In a New York TImes article (accompanied by an awesome slideshow shot by a friend of mine) the reporter brings up the issue Obama is encountering in small-town Indiana: maybe people don’t want change. At the very least, they have a problem with the vague notion of change being tossed out without specifics, something that Obama is often guilty of.

No matter how much Indiana and West Virginia need some kind of change, it remains to be seen whether they’re going to give Obama a chance to deliver on his promise.

Now that we’re a couple of days into May, the WV Democratic primary is getting closer. For the first time in memory, the primaries are actually stretching on this long and actually matter. That’s not something West Virginians, as well as most of the country outside of Iowa and New Hampshire, are used to.

But who will win West Virginia? A lot of the media are becoming skeptical over Sen. Obama’s ability to win out over white, working class voters. That might be a problem for him in the Mountain State where 94.6 percent of the population is white, and the per capita income was $19,417 (in 2006).

For a while I figured both candidates would have handicaps in West Virginia: Clinton for her sex and Obama for his race. However, most people I talked to didn’t have a problem with the fact that Hillary’s a woman. Waiting in line at a Dollar General in Mullens, WV several months ago, I heard an older man say he was going to vote for Hillary. Why? Because he liked Bill Clinton’s administration, and figured Hillary was pretty much running it anyway.

No matter who takes West Virginia, the question of who can get the most votes in a general election is still up in the air. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, one of John McCain’s advisers was quoted as saying:

“Sen. Obama doesn’t appear to have the ability to hold the traditional Democratic coalition together as well as Sen. Clinton might,” says Charlie Black, a top adviser to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. “On the other hand, he runs much better with independent voters than Sen. Clinton does.”

On May 13, I guess we’ll see if WV has more traditional Democrats or independents.

The Charleston Gazette reported today that Bob Graham, the former director of the Wyoming County Council on Aging, maintains that he did nothing wrong and is not apologizing for his actions while director.

In 2006, Graham was tried on charges of embezzlement and mismanagement of the county’s senior citizen center. According to federal prosecutors, Graham had a hot tub installed at the Itmann West Virginia center and repeatedly visited strip clubs on the Council’s dime. Graham was convicted of collecting money for unpaid sick leave without board approval, but the conviction was overturned last month by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Regardless of whether or not Graham is innocent on the other charges, he was receiving $185,000 a year for overseeing the Council on Aging. This, reported the Gazette, is compared to most senior citizen center directors in West Virginia who make around $42,000.

Graham said he believes he deserved that higher pay because he had an expanded program. “They were supervising 20 people,” he said, “and I was supervising over 400.”

The West Virginia Record reported that Graham was also paid $133.41 per hour for overtime work, much of which could have been performed by minimum wage employees.

Included in those tasks were: 16 hours to clean his office, costing $2,135; 25 hours at a Las Vegas conference and “getting caught up,” costing $3,335; 19 hours to check on the floor sealing, costing $2,535; and a total of 10 hours “picking up supplies,” costing $1,334.

The median household income in 1999 (the last year data was available) for Wyoming County was $23,932. The Wyoming County Council on Aging is a non-profit, and the question begs to be asked whether a hot tub (even if it was used exclusively by seniors) and an astronomically high salary for the director are the best uses of the organization’s money. In a rapidly-aging community where some seniors live without basic necessities (such as running water), it seems that in the future the Council should find other ways to allocate the money previously spent on Bob Graham.