Eighteen months later, after defeating a former Senate President and U.S. Attorney in the primary, there is little doubt that the Democratic front runner has the full backing of his party in the state, even though his platform parallels that of his Republican rival.
Credit Chris Tilley / AP Photo
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Jim Justice announced his intention to run for governor in White Sulphur Springs in May 2015.
U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s only Democratic member of Congress, endorsed Justice in March, but Manchin’s team of political insiders has been working with the Democratic gubernatorial candidate since long before the endorsement including Larry Puccio, Manchin’s former chief of staff, who works as a consultant on the campaign.
“He’s been able to do great things. He thinks big. He thinks on a different level,” Puccio said on MetroNews’s Talkline in October.
It’s a message that Justice himself has traveled the state touting, but the candidate has been criticized for speaking too broadly about his plans for West Virginia’s future, not giving the voters specific ideas about how he’ll create jobs, diversify the state’s economy, and deal with shrinking tax revenues—three of the biggest issues in the race.
“We’re dying on the vine. We’ve proven how to die. We’ve got to think big and we’ve got to move forward,” Justice said during a televised debate in October, a broad statement he’s made several times.
During the second of two televised debates, Justice did share some economic plans, like calling on Congress to credit the state for its large acreage of forested land or attracting the next Dollywood to West Virginia.
Professor of Political Science at West Virginia Wesleyan College Dr. Robert Rupp said those big ideas and the way Justice conveys them, that’s part of who his is as a candidate- a down-home, folksy guy.
“That ensures that he can connect with the voters, but the difficulty is can he convince the voters that he will be a good governor,” he said.
Rupp, a former Republican member of the State Election Commission, said throughout the campaign Justice has had to work harder to convey an image of leadership than his Republican opponent, Senate President Bill Cole, but all of the polls, even those paid for by the state GOP, show Justice is up in the race, by as much as double digits in some cases. That lead has left him open to attacks.
National Party Politics
The Republican Governor’s Association has spent nearly a million dollars on the race, largely on television ads that attempt to link Justice to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate for president who is widely unpopular in the state.
Some center on donations he and his family made in 2011 to the Democratic National Committee.
The Justice family donated more than $120,000 to the DNC during the 2012 election cycle, but Jim Justice has said those dollars were in support of Steve Beshear, Kentucky’s former Democratic governor.
Credit Tyler Evert / AP Photo
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AP Photo
Jim Justice, left, and Bill Cole, right, shake hands after their first debate in October.
“It’s preposterous for a coal man to be a supporter of Hillary Clinton. I don’t know why we continue with those lies and they’re just absolute lies,” Justice said during a debate with Republican Cole.
But it’s Justice’s reputation of being a coal man that news outlets have scrutinized during the race.
Justice’s Business Practices
An NPR investigation in October found Justice companies owed $15 million in unpaid local, state and federal taxes as well as delinquent mine safety fines.
In West Virginia, Justice owed $3 million in unpaid severance taxes on coal, an area of decline in tax revenues that’s caused significant financial hardship for the state.
Credit Don Petersen / AP Photo
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AP Photo
Greenbriar Classic chairman and Greenbriar Resort owner Jim Justice speaks during a news conference, Tuesday July 2, 2013, in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.
Justice responded to the report during an October 11 debate, saying yes, he owes the taxes and fines, but he is working through a difficult time in the coal industry and unlike many other companies, hasn’t filed for bankruptcy.
“If we would’ve given up, what would have happened? Those good people, men and women that were working, they would have gone home,” Justice said. “They wouldn’t have had their jobs and I won’t feel bad for one second for trying to keep those people in their jobs.”
So if his business record, his party’s national politics, and his broad policy ideas haven’t knocked Justice out of the front runner position, less than a week from Election Day, some say maybe nothing can.
There is one other factor in the race though— Mountain Party candidate Charlotte Pritt.
Pritt was the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor in 1996 and today, is collecting the party’s protest votes—left-leaning West Virginia Democrats who are less than satisfied with conservative Justice’s campaign.
Pritt has polled as high as 8 percent in the race, but is her Democratic support enough to sway the race away from Justice?
Phil Hudok is one of three third party candidates running for the gubernatorial seat. Hudok represents the Constitution Party. He touts his Christian values and his message of freedom as some of his qualifications for governor, and he says if elected, he would help get West Virginia on the right track.
Background
Phil Hudok was born in Cleveland, Ohio but moved to Randolph County, West Virginia with his family when he was six-months-old where he still lives today. In 1980, he married his wife, and they have four daughters.
Hudok is a retired school teacher and taught chemistry, physics, biology, and human anatomy for 40 years.He’s also the vice-Chairman of West Virginia’s Constitution Party.
“I feel that it’s my duty to run for office even though I’m 66-years-old and I’ve never actually held an office; I’ve run several times, but I feel that our country’s in trouble,” he said.
Hudok ran for governor the first time in 2012 and for U.S. Senate in 2014. He collected more than 10,000 signatures over four years to be on the 2014 ballot and in this year’s governor’s race.
One of Hudok’s main messages is freedom, making West Virginia a freer state by keeping government in check. When it comes to the problems facing West Virginia, Hudok points to a moral meltdown as a root cause.
“When you don’t have a good moral compass, no contracts work,” Hudok noted, “I don’t care if it’s husband and wife. I don’t care whether it’s parents and children, or people in their government. You know, if you are not a person of your word, if you don’t have convictions, if you don’t have a moral compass, then society degenerates, and I think that’s what we have.”
State Budget
If elected, Hudok would be faced with a number of issues like balancing the state budget. Hudok would like to see West Virginia invest in an agricultural product.
“I would like to see the state’s number one, or number two, or number three cash crop be industrial hemp,” he explained, “We have a hard time eradicating something that actually has tremendous value in so many ways.”
Hudok also believes in the legalization of marijuana for both recreational and medicinal purposes, but he says it shouldn’t be an economic driver.
“I wouldn’t do it for economic reasons,” he said, “I’m doing it, because I believe you should be responsible for what you do. Your choice, your responsible.”
Education
The education system is another area Hudok says he would want to reform. He believes the state passes down too many unfunded mandates to the local level — things they are required to do, but don’t receive money to take on. He’d encourage less regulation, less surveillance, and more control at the local level.
“I believe the principal should have more power, the teacher’s should have more power, the students should have more responsibility,” he noted.
Hudok also says many of the problems with education can’t all be fixed in the classroom. Teachers spend their time dealing with students who don’t have parents at home or who are dealing with substance abuse, pointing back to his stance on strengthening the family structure and upholding religious values.
Jobs
Economic diversification and the creation of new jobs has been one of the biggest issues in this race, but Hudok says that’s not the governor’s duty.
“The only jobs government can create are government jobs,” he said, “I don’t think the government should be in competition with private enterprise.”
Hudok’s Message to Voters
Hudok says he’s not a career politician, but he’s running for governor, because he thinks the state is in major trouble, and he says he’s the one to fix it.
“I want to be the candidate that roared, that spent less than a couple thousand dollars. Didn’t spend millions. I’ve done a lot of research, and I was originally just science oriented, but, and I wasn’t interested in government. Now, after I had children, and I started looking where we were headed, I said, wait a minute, something’s really wrong here. ”
Early voting is already underway across the state. Election Day is just one week from Tuesday.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB) has hosted a special Viewpoint forum with candidates in the West Virginia Governor’s race. Constitution Party candidate Phil Hudok, Libertarian Party candidate David Moran, and Mountain Party candidate Charlotte Pritt participated.
The discussion focuses on their remedies for state budget woes, growing the economy, strengthening our education system, and an array of other challenges facing the next governor of West Virginia. The forum is hosted by Ashton Marra, Assistant News Director for West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
On Radio – The special will air Monday, Oct 24 at 2:00 p.m., and again on Wednesday, Oct 26, at 8 p.m. on WVPB’s statewide radio network.
On TV – The forum special will air Sunday, Oct 23 from 7-8 p.m.. on WVPB’s statewide television network. It will be preceded at 6:30 p.m. by the AARP-sponsored gubernatorial election special with Democratic candidate Jim Justice and and Republican candidate Bill Cole. Both programs also air on the West Virginia Channel on Monday, Oct 24 starting at at 7:30 p.m.
Online – You can listen online at wvpublic.org during the radio airdates, or download the Viewpoint podcast to listen on demand. The TV version of the special will also be available on WVPB’s YouTube channel.
After an NPR investigation into Jim Justice’s business operations, the Democratic candidate for governor takes on Republican Bill Cole in the second West Virginia gubernatorial debate.
A leaked tape where Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump can be heard describing sexually assaulting women causes waves in West Virginia politics, but will either scandal swing the vote?
Ann Ali, managing editor of the State Journal, and MetroNews Statewide Correspondent Brad McElhinney join us to discuss the race.
It hasn’t been that long since the state Democratic Party rarely had to worry about the Republicans winning a race over their candidates, but in 2014, things really changed in West Virginia.
After 80 years of holding a Legislative majority, the Democrats lost their hold of both the state House and Senate and shifted the nation away from thinking of West Virginia as a solidly blue state. Anne Li took a deeper look at what happened leading up to the flip and whether voters’ feelings then will impact this year’s state legislative races.
J.B. McCuskey may be a familiar name to some folks in Charleston. A resident of the capital city, McCuskey was elected to represent the 35th House of Delegates District in 2012, but this year, he’s attempting to appeal to a much wider swath of the electorate.
McCuskey is the Republican running for Auditor, a statewide office left vacant this year when long-time Auditor Glen Gainer retired. McCuskey sat down with me in September to discuss his ideas for the office and the race that isn’t getting quite as much attention on a statewide scale.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting (WVPB) will provide live coverage of the second televised debate between GOP Senate President Bill Cole and Democratic candidate Jim Justice.
The debate is scheduled from 7 – 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 11. It is sponsored by the West Virginia Broadcasters Association and Citynet. HoppyKercheval of Metronews will moderate the event.
WVPB’s statewide television and radio networks will broadcast the debate. Audio and video feeds will also be available online at wvpublic.org. WVPB reporters plan to live-tweet the event from our @wvpublicnews Twitter account.
West Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor is a billionaire, a philanthropist and a resort and coal mine owner who cites his business and mining experience as major attributes as he seeks to lead his home state out of a severe budget and economic crisis.
“I am not a career politician; I am a career businessman,” wrote Jim Justice in an April 5 op-ed that appeared in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
But an NPR investigation shows that Justice’s mining companies still fail to pay millions of dollars in mine safety penalties two years after an earlier investigation documented the same behavior. Our analysis of federal data shows that Justice is now the nation’s top mine safety delinquent.
His mining companies owe $15 million in six states, including property and minerals taxes, state coal severance and withholding taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes, as well as mine safety penalties, according to county, state and federal records.
In the past 16 months, while fines and taxes went unpaid, Justice personally contributed nearly $2.9 million in interest-free loans and in-kind contributions to his gubernatorial campaign, according to state campaign finance reports.
Grant Herring, a spokesman for the Justice gubernatorial campaign, said Justice “won’t be doing an interview,” despite multiple requests after NPR provided details of its investigation.
But Billy Shelton, an attorney for Justice mining companies in Kentucky, responded to Justice’s failure to pay $2.6 million in delinquent federal mine safety penalties, which are levied by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. MSHA and Treasury Department data obtained by NPR show that Justice has paid $675,000 this year as part of a payment agreement, but the agreement covers less than half of the total amount owed.
“Unlike the coal companies that filed for bankruptcy and walked away from their obligations, the Justice companies are being responsible and following the agreed-upon payment plan. … The Justice companies are taking the proper steps to make good on all MSHA commitments,” Shelton says. “To imply anything beyond that is purely for political reasons and ignores the facts.”
Credit Anna Boiko-Weyrauch / NPR
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NPR
A coal separator sorts and piles up coal at the Tams mountaintop removal mine near Beckley, W.Va. The mine is operated by Southern Coal Corp., which is owned by Jim Justice.
Safety Violations Persist
Justice is celebrated in West Virginia for saving the historic and luxurious Greenbrier Resort, a major economic driver for the surrounding region. But dozens of his coal mines in West Virginia and other Appalachian states have a history of safety violations and failure to pay on time the penalties that are supposed to discourage unsafe practices, according to MSHA violations and penalties data.
That’s what NPR and Mine Safety and Health News documented in a joint investigation in 2014. At the time, Tom Lusk, the chief operating officer of Justice’s mining companies, insisted that Justice “does not run from his obligations. … He’s made it abundantly clear that there’s no way we’re going to not fully meet and satisfy these obligations.”
Credit Brendan Smialowsk / /AFP/Getty Images
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/AFP/Getty Images
A view of Jim Justice’s Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., in 2013.
NPR conducted another analysis of federal mine safety data exactly two years later and found that mines owned by Justice added $1.38 million in new and unpaid mine safety penalties.
Delinquent Justice mines also continue to have worse-than-average safety records, according to NPR’s analysis of MSHA injury and violations data. NPR’s analysis shows that injury rates (for injuries forcing time away from work) are twice the national average and violations rates more than four times the national rate during the years the Justice mines failed to pay penalties.
The MSHA data also show that those mines were cited for 3,657 violations while they were delinquent, including 699 violations that are classified by MSHA as factors in mine fatalities, fatal mine accidents and major disasters.
MSHA mine inspectors issued dozens of citations for excessive coal dust, which can feed mine explosions, and roof and wall violations, which can lead to mine collapses.
One Justice mining company, Kentucky Fuel Corp., owed more than $709,000 in delinquent penalties, according to MSHA data, and was admonished in an April decision from the Federal Mine Safety and Health Commission, which adjudicates penalty disputes.
“Kentucky Fuel’s history regarding the payment of penalties is abysmal,” the commission wrote. “The operator’s record indicates that it has repeatedly disregarded final penalty assessments.”
The Justice fines concern Celeste Monforton, a former MSHA official, mine disaster investigator and lecturer on workplace safety at George Washington University and Texas State University.
“I don’t think we should forget that the reason that he has those penalties is because there were violations and hazards in his coal mining operations,” says Monforton.
DELINQUENT MINES INVESTIGATION UPDATE
NPR found two more noteworthy developments in its 2016 review of delinquent mine safety data after the 2014 investigation:
As NPR reported in 2014, five people died in in a mine explosion at Kentucky Darby in 2006. The $500,000 in penalties for that disaster plus $2.4 million more in fines at mines owned by Ralph Napier Sr. and his partners disappeared from the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s books. The agency says the delinquencies were declared non-collectible and the IRS issued 1099 forms declaring the unpaid fines taxable income. But the companies are defunct so no collection is ever expected.
NPR profiled D&C owner Horace Garrison Hill in our 2014 stories and detailed a fatal accident there. His mine owed more than $4 million in delinquent fines. That debt also disappeared from MSHA’s records and resulted in a 1099 form. D&C is also defunct.
“That’s the way the system is set up and it has to change,” says Tony Oppegard, a former mine safety regulator who represents the families of miners killed at both D&C and Kentucky Darby. “There’s no incentive to run a safe mine if you know that you don’t have to pay your fines.” MSHA says it supports a bill in Congress that would give the agency authority to shut down delinquent mines six months after they become delinquent.
The agency did revive a little-used enforcement tool after NPR’s 2014 stories. It cited a mine’s failure to pay penalties as a failure to fix the safety hazards that led to those penalties. It then shut down the mine until the owner agreed to a payment plan. That’s happened four times since.
NPR’s stories also prompted an inspector general’s audit of MSHA’s penalties system and practices. A report is expected soon.
Kentucky Fuel also tops all of Justice’s mining companies for delinquent fines, county taxes and state and federal tax liens combined, with more than $8 million due, according to county, state and federal records.
Justice was asked about safety at his mines when he announced his run for governor last year.
“I’m a safety fanatic,” he said at a news conference. “So I’m the last person in the world that’s wanting something to where you would put an employee in a situation that would be unsafe.”
As for the delinquent mine safety fines reported by NPR in 2014, Justice said “we’ll absolutely … make sure that every one of them is taken care of.”
Lusk and MSHA agreed to a payment plan in December 2015, after two years of discussions, and the Justice mining companies have made every $75,000 monthly payment since. But the plan does not cover more than $1.7 million in unpaid fines referred to the U.S. Treasury for collection, according to Treasury records provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
The records show that some of the delinquent fines have been sent on to the U.S. Department of Justice for possible litigation and that others are pending referral to the agency.
Shelton says he is seeking a payment plan to cover the fines referred to Treasury.
The “Justice group has diligently pursued payment plans and full resolution of all outstanding issues,” Lusk recently said.
Payment plans also exist in counties where Justice mining companies failed to pay more than $5.4 million in county taxes.
Media and legal pressure have been successful in getting the Justice companies to pay.
In April, the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported that the Justice companies owed $3.9 million in delinquent 2015 property taxes in West Virginia. Most were paid within two weeks.
Credit Anna Boiko-Weyrauch / NPR
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NPR
A dirt road in Tazewell County, Va., leads to the War Creek underground coal mine, where county officials seized mining equipment in April to force payment of delinquent county taxes. War Creek is operated by Justice subsidiary Black River Coal, which is also named in state tax liens in neighboring West Virginia.
In Harlan County, Ky., in October, the county attorney sued. In Tazewell County, Va., in April, the county sheriff seized mining equipment at a Justice mine, citing back taxes. Both moves got the checks flowing.
In Knott County, Ky., multiple lawsuits were filed against Justice’s Kentucky Fuel Corp. A suit last year sought $2.7 million for three years of back taxes. That triggered about $300,000 in payments, but those suddenly stopped in April, says Knott County Judge-Executive Zachary Weinberg.
Weinberg calls Kentucky Fuel a “habitual offender” that is denying the county critical funds.
“You’re talking about maybe a grant writer, or to keep the senior citizens’ program whole or to pick trash up or to keep lights on, [or] to keep the employees with good health insurance,” Weinberg says, adding that the county health board, school board, conservation district and extension office share in and need the unpaid taxes.
Knott County sought court orders twice in the past two months and payments suddenly resumed again.
Even Shelton, Justice’s Kentucky attorney, sued to get paid.
In 2013, Shelton filed a complaint in Pike County, Ky., seeking $85,220 in unpaid legal fees from seven Justice mining companies. Within a month, Shelton had a default judgment awarding him his money plus legal fees and interest.
“[The] lawsuit was the result of a misunderstanding,” Shelton says now, adding that the right Justice executive wasn’t aware of the dispute until the suit was filed.
Just last week, 26 Justice mining companies and the Environmental Protection Agency agreed to a $6 million settlement for thousands of water pollution violations, which have been the focus of news stories in the past two years.
Millions More in Unpaid State and Federal Taxes
It’s not just federal fines and county taxes that have public agencies seeking money from Justice’s mines.
NPR found in county records in South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia more than $6 million in state and federal tax liens for failure to pay state withholding and coal severance taxes, and federal income, excise and unemployment taxes.
Most of the state and federal liens — more than $4.5 million worth — are in Justice’s home state of West Virginia, and more than 60 percent of that debt is for state coal severance taxes.
Credit Anna Boiko-Weyrauch / NPR
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NPR
A haul road leads to the top of the Tams mountaintop removal mine near Beckley, W.Va.
In 2014 alone, Justice’s Kentucky Fuel Corp. failed to pay $1.14 million in coal severance taxes. That’s documented in a lien filed by the West Virginia Tax Department, and that single lien made up about a third of the state’s total coal severance tax delinquencies for the year, according to figures provided by the agency.
Justice himself touted the importance of coal severance taxes last week in an interview with the editorial board of The Dominion Post of Morgantown, W.Va.
He “adamantly” opposed a proposal to cut the state severance tax. “All that does is put some money in my pocket,” Justice told the newspaper. Cutting the tax would force the state “to cut our roads and our schools and everything else.”
Tough Times for Coal
Two years ago, Lusk told NPR that a sharp decline in the coal industry made it difficult for mining companies to pay their bills. He also said Justice believed his companies had to stand on their own.
“An operator that’s going to maintain a safe operation is faced with a dilemma of what gets paid and what doesn’t,” Lusk said. “And the unpaid fines and citations … have simply been not having the available cash to settle those.”
Coal mining has suffered even more since then, with thousands of jobs lost and some of the biggest operators declaring bankruptcy.
ABOUT THE DATA IN THIS STORY
NPR acquired and analyzed Mine Safety and Health Administration data for all U.S. mining companies that had failed to pay final mine safety fines and had already been through any challenges and appeals. Additional delinquent mine data were provided by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
After the data showed Jim Justice was the top delinquent mine owner, NPR pulled out the delinquent penalties for his mines and then analyzed Department of Labor violations and injury data for those mines while they were delinquent.
Violations numbers and details were also drawn from raw Department of Labor enforcement data for the delinquent Justice mines. Violation rates for each mine were calculated using the Violations Per Inspection Day calculator available in MSHA’s searchable Mine Data Retrieval System.
Coal tonnage for each mine is reported annually by the Department of Labor. Coal value is estimated using average sales prices provided by the Energy Information Administration for each mine type, state and subregion, if applicable (i.e., eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia).
Court documents and county officials provided information about lawsuits and other enforcement actions. Payment plan information was gleaned from documents and information provided by MSHA, interviews of county officials and attorneys and correspondence with an attorney representing Justice.
Most of Justice’s delinquent mines are now either abandoned or temporarily closed. But while they were operating and delinquent, they produced more than 2.4 million tons of coal, according to MSHA data.
And that coal, according to coal price reports from the Energy Information Administration, was conservatively worth an estimated $697 million.
Still, Justice campaign spokesman Herring cited “the downturn in the coal industry” in trying to explain something else NPR discovered — Justice’s failure to honor two highly publicized pledges to major charities.
In 2011, with news stories celebrating the announcement, Justice promised to contribute $10 million to Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the commercialization arm of the Ohio medical giant.
Cleveland Clinic spokesperson Janice Guhl tells NPR “no money was received from Mr. Justice.”
Three months earlier, the Boy Scouts of America announced a $25 million gift from Justice to create the James C. Justice National Scout Camp, which is part of a 14,000-acre Boy Scout reserve in West Virginia.
But Herring confirms that Justice donated only $5 million and some land. He says the coal industry’s decline “has delayed some larger donations, but Jim Justice always keeps his word and has every intention of fulfilling all of his charitable pledges.”
In Knott County, Weinberg notes that his county is also suffering from coal mine closures and layoffs. The county budget, he says, was slashed in half in the last six years.
Weinberg believes Justice has the resources to pay what his companies owe. Forbes says Justice is the richest person in West Virginia and worth $1.56 billion.
That’s plenty for Weinberg. “He could pay it one way or the other,” he says.
UPDATE, 11:56 a.m., Oct. 8: Effie Delimarkos, spokesperson for the Boy Scouts of America, said in a statement to NPR: “While we do not disclose details regarding individual donations, we are proud that Mr. Justice chose to provide the Boy Scouts of America with a generous contribution, and we have every reason to believe that he will honor his pledge (to) Scouting.”
This story was also reported and researched by Robert Benincasa, Barbara Van Woerkom, Lily Lieberman and Anna Boiko-Weyrauch of NPR; Jesse Wright, Ashton Marra and Dave Mistich of West Virginia Public Broadcasting; Jeff Young, Benny Becker and Becca Schimmel of Ohio Valley ReSource; and Ellen Smith of Mine Safety and Health News.
