Richard Ojeda who championed West Virginia\u2019s teachers, just lost a congressional race.<\/b>
\nRichard Ojeda, the brash Army veteran from West Virginia who galvanized the state\u2019s teacher strikes earlier this year, says he is running for president in 2020.
The Democratic state senator told the Intercept about his bid for the White House on Sunday, less than a week after losing his race for West Virginia\u2019s Third Congressional District. He lost the seat by 12 points to his Republican opponent, Carol Miller \u2014 a race that was always viewed as a long shot. After all, Ojeda was a Democrat running for office in the heart of West Virginia\u2019s coal country, a district Donald Trump won in 2016 by 49 points.
But the recent loss seems like it hasn\u2019t fazed Ojeda. Maybe that\u2019s because he did better than expected in the reddest district in the state. His 12-point loss represented the largest swing of Trump voters toward Democrats in any district around the country, according to the Intercept. It just wasn\u2019t enough to topple a Republican in such a pro-Trump area.
Ojeda believes that his brand of Democratic populism is what the party needs to win in 2020.
\u201cThe reason why the Democratic Party fell from grace is because they become nothing more than elitist, that was it. Goldman Sachs, that\u2019s who they were,\u201d Ojeda told the Intercept. \u201cThe Democratic Party is supposed to be the party that fights for the working class and that\u2019s exactly what I do.\u201d
Vox reached out to Ojeda\u2019s campaign, but had not received a response as of publication time.
Ojeda\u2019s unapologetic criticism of coal companies and corporate America resonated with working-class voters in the region, and his outspoken defense of West Virginia\u2019s teachers earlier this year launched him into the national spotlight .
The outspoken, tattooed combat veteran reflects all the contradictions of West Virginia politics: He is pro-gun rights and pro-labor; he\u2019s also a Democrat who voted for Trump (and now regrets it). The state\u2019s coal miners have aligned themselves with him, but it was his vocal support of West Virginia\u2019s teachers that turned him into a working-class hero.
\u201cWe are sitting on a powder keg,\u201d said Ojeda during a Senate speech in January. \u201cIf you think teachers across this state are not saying the s-word, you are wrong.\u201d
The \u201cs-word\u201d was \u201cstrike\u201d \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what happened. A few weeks later, every school in the state shut down as teachers rallied outside the state Capitol, angry about a meager 1 percent raise and rising health insurance premiums.
Ojeda had strongly criticized lawmakers about the 1 percent raise and introduced several other bills with the teachers in mind. One gave teachers a tax break for buying classroom supplies; another aimed to stabilize health care premiums for public employees; a third gave public employees a $5,000 raise over three years.
The bills never passed, but Ojeda did advocate for teachers during the strike, giving speeches outside the Capitol and on the Senate floor, and voted for the final bill that ended the strike. During the nine-day protest, teachers sported T-shirts and carried posters with Ojeda\u2019s photo and took selfies with him.
In the end, teachers got the 5 percent pay raise for all public employees they were demanding, and the strike and its aftermath turned Ojeda into a hero to educators.
Trump won the presidency in part by selling himself as a champion of the working class. Ojeda says that was all a farce, and that Americans are starting to see that.
About 73 percent of voters in Ojeda\u2019s district cast a ballot for Trump, more than the state\u2019s other two House districts. Ojeda cast a ballot for Trump too, but says he now regrets it.
\u201cIt\u2019s been a friggin\u2019 circus for a solid year,\u201d he told Politico magazine in March. \u201cAll he\u2019s done… is shown that he\u2019s taking care of the daggone people he\u2019s supposed to be getting rid of.\u201d
Ojeda has been careful not to bash Trump too much. His rural district includes West Virginia\u2019s coal mines and timber farms, and it\u2019s the poorest district in the state \u2014 more than 60 percent of residents live in poverty. Yet voters here have cast their ballots for Republican presidents since George W. Bush first ran for the White House.
It\u2019s worth noting that Democrats still outnumber Republicans in every county in the district. In fact, the House seat Ojeda was running for has historically been held by Democrats; it wasn\u2019t until 2015 that a Republican, Evan Jenkins, won the seat for the first time in 40 years.
Ojeda has campaigned as a populist Democrat with a focus on labor issues. \u201cRight-to-work needs to go,\u201d he said in a Facebook Live video, referring to the state law that lets workers opt out of their local labor union. \u201cIf we take back the state of West Virginia, we will be the first state to overturn right-to-work.\u201d
But he has also taken positions that might not be as popular in red America. For instance, he was instrumental in passing the state\u2019s medical marijuana law and voted down an anti-abortion bill.
His support for the teachers\u2019 strike, however, gave him national name recognition; he was the subject of a glossy profile in Politico magazine in March.
A big part of Ojeda\u2019s fight has been calling on his colleagues to raise taxes, something few lawmakers in this conservative state have been willing to do.
He blasted former legislators for \u201cgiving away\u201d the state to coal companies without getting anything in return for residents. He added that legislators needed to raise taxes on natural gas companies putting pipelines throughout West Virginia.
\u201cThere will be billions pulled from our state,\u201d he said during a Senate speech in January. \u201cIf we allow that to go, and do not think of the citizens of West Virginia, then shame on all of us.\u201d
Ojeda will clearly face a lot of competition in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination \u2014 competition from candidates with far more star power.
But Ojeda thinks he has at least one advantage: He is not a millionaire or career politician.
He describes himself as \u201ca working-class person that basically can relate to the people on the ground, the people that are actually struggling,\u201d according to the Intercept. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to throw stones at people that are rich, but once again, we will have a field that will be full of millionaires and I\u2019m sure a few billionaires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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