DEMS/ELECTION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Richard Ojeda is not a typical Democratic congressional candidate. The heavily tattooed former Army paratrooper stomps around southwestern West Virginia in tight Grunt Style t-shirts, tactical pants and combat boots. He included his own cell phone number — and a promise to answer it — in his campaign kick-off video. In place of ‘hello’ or ‘goodbye,’ his go-to greeting is ‘Airborne.’ And he voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Ojeda — pronounced Oh-jed-uh — is now running for Congress in a district Trump won by 49 percentage points on the message that the President has largely failed to deliver on his economic promises. Perhaps that’s why at a recent rally in West Virginia, Trump singled out Ojeda, calling him ‘a total whacko’…Ojeda’s campaign has at times been a one-man mission to call attention to one of the most economically desolate regions of the country — a reality that explains some of his populist positions. Ojeda loves coal jobs but loathes energy industry executives. He favors marijuana legalization because, he says, it’s a way to combat ‘Big Pharma’ and loosen opioid addiction’s grip on southwestern West Virginia. He likes the generals surrounding Trump, but sees wealthy appointees like education secretary Betsy DeVos as anathema to Trump’s campaign promises.”
–Eric Bradner, “He voted for Trump. Now he’s running as his foe in West Virginia’s coal country,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, October 3, 2018 9:08 pm