The New Trump Democrat

Why progressives are rooting for Richard Ojeda—a pro-pot, pro-coal West Virginia populist who voted for the president

- Tim Murphy

On Most nights during the nine-day West Virginia teacher strike last winter, Richard Ojeda could be found at his office in Logan County, gesturing wildly at his iPhone. Ojeda, a 47-year-old former paratrooper who is rarely seen outside the state Senate chamber in anything other than a tight-fitting Grunt Style T-shirt, had been logging on for Facebook Live segments about once a week since getting elected in 2016. During his first year as a state senator, he typically got a few thousand viewers for his riffs about the corruption in the Democratic Party or his proposal to turn decommissioned surface mines into vast fields of marijuana and lavender.

Then, in January, Ojeda became the first politician in Charleston to say publicly what the teachers in his district had been discussing among themselves: If the state didn’t shore up public-employee health plans and increase their pay, they’d walk. Soon, his videos were drawing tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of viewers. By the time the protests got going, a quarter of a million people were watching. Ojeda (pronounced ohJED-uh) went from a locally known figure to a rising star, someone who, in the eyes of his supporters, could not only upend West Virginia politics, but maybe offer Democrats in deep-red enclaves a blueprint for fighting back.

“He’s like Elvis right now,” says Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher from Charleston. “A rock star,” says Katie Endicott, a Mingo County teacher who helped organize the first round of walkouts. Ryan Frankenberry, state director of the West Virginia Working Families Party, says, “It’s like watching people listen to Jesus.”