West Virginia’s next senator is almost surely Jim Justice. We know our beautiful state has a lousy reputation, but Big Jim is going to bring us to new lows of country clown comedy and anti-redneck derision.
In the Republican primary race for Joe Manchin’s Senate seat, term-limited Governor Justice faces off against U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney and a bunch of unknowns. Mooney, a carpet bagger from Maryland with no discernable personality, has been a do-less representative and MAGA tool in the House for years.
Governor Justice is big, 6’7” and President Taft-like in the weight area (though to be fair, Taft was only 5’11”.) Justice styles himself as full-on cornpone down home barely off the farm, yet also an astute businessman who ran in 2016 as the richest man in the state.
In 2018, Forbes had him in the billionaire category at $1.5B until it discovered an undisclosed $850 million debt and dropped him from the list.
Justice owns coal mines, commercial farms, and the famed Greenbrier resort. The whole business “empire” is deeply in debt and under constant attack by its creditors.
Justice is a deadbeat. He has more than $1 billion in personal loan guarantees to financial institutions, the still-outstanding debt of $850 million for coal-mining equipment, $300 million owed to a Virginia bank*, and $35 million to a Tennessee businessman. It’s estimated that his coal companies owe at least $200 million in unpaid reclamation costs.
In court cases, his creditors allege that Justice uses his companies to play shell games by hiding assets. When judgments are rendered, his companies are never able to pay them.
[*In breaking news, the Greenbrier Sporting Club properties will be auctioned off in a trustee’s sale on March 5 to pay $250M owed to Carter Bank. Is the empire finally crumbling?]
That he’s really “Deadbeat Jim” doesn’t concern the MAGA Republicans who now control West Virginia. Somehow, like Trump, the bad news just rolls right off.
The voters love him for his English bulldog Babydog who goes everywhere with him and has her own camp chair next to his. When Bette Midler called West Virginians “poor, illiterate, and strung out” (we do have a terrible reputation), Jim Justice stuck Baby Dog’s rear end up in the cameras and told Bette Midler to “Kiss her heinie.” Midler apologized; Justice did not.
He once rejected a legislative budget by displaying a plate of cow dung (otherwise, BS). MAGA voters loved it.
Big Jim’s speeches are mostly down-home sayings, folk wisdom, self-congratulation, and meager substance - what the mainstream media affectionately calls “quirky” and “his unique rambling style.”
It’s a shtick, very much like Trump’s but without the malignant narcissism.
From the beginning in 2016, Justice cared little for actual governing. He ran as a Democrat. Yes, I voted for him. He had bought the Greenbrier out of bankruptcy and there was a story about how happy the resort workers were. (More fool me.)
Reading the WV political winds, at a Trump rally 8 months later Justice came out of the closet as a Republican and threw his support behind Trump. “Like me, he’s not a politician.” (Turns out that’s not a great reason to elect someone to a political office.)
Trump has endorsed Justice for the Senate and in return Justice now bashes Biden and touts “America First,”
Justice is happier as a Republican because he can just let the veto-proof Republican WV legislature do whatever it pleases: outlaw abortion, defund public schools, cut taxes, criminalize “obscenity” in schools and libraries, and declare the sovereignty of Texas.
To show his appreciation (or disdain?) for Speaker of the WV House Hanshaw and Senate President Blair, after this year’s State of the State address, Justice gave them each a framed picture of Babydog.
What Justice really likes to do is coach girls’ basketball. He does have winning teams. He also coached boys’ basketball until he became governor, but when the boys’ coaching job came open in 2021 he applied. The board turned him down 3-2 because they thought he should be governing. He threatened to sue, accusing the board of hating him. (“Does the hate of these Board members hurt? Of course, it does.”)
He won’t say whether he will continue to coach girls’ basketball if elected to the Senate.
As a girls’ basketball coach, this week Justice supported legislation to define “woman.” “It really started over the unfairness of sports. I mean who would have ever thunk it?” Justice said. “Women are women . . . and it’s not fair.”
Justice also cares about The Greenbrier, the focus of many ethics complaints about conflicts of interest. State agencies find ways to please Justice by privately financing meetings at the Greenbrier without violating a new law (necessitated by Justice) that agencies themselves cannot spend money there. State ethics officials say it’s legal, but “West Virginia laws never contemplated someone like Jim Justice.”
My MAGA neighbors tell me they support Justice because the state has never been in better financial shape. That’s what he tells them. They simply don’t believe that a post-Covid energy boom combined with billions of dollars in federal stimulus dollars made revenues look robust enough for the biggest tax cut in history. Now energy prices are down, tax revenues are uneven, and the big tax cut hasn’t taken full effect.
For all his folksy guff, Justice is leaving West Virginia in about the same shape as his businesses.
Like his debts, Justice also doesn’t like to talk about the crisis in state jails and prisons, our rising child poverty rate, the ruthless down-sizing of our flagship university WVU, our national lead in overdose deaths per capita, widespread teacher and school personnel shortages, significant premium increases in state insurance, and a crisis in foster care and child protective services.
If any of this bothers you, Big Jim Justice has a dog’s rear end to show you, a rear end that may soon be getting national attention. “Kiss her heinie.”
