On a chilly February day in 2019, nearly 200 residents, some wearing miners' helmets and holding handwritten signs reading “Save Unit 3,” gathered in a Muhlenberg County park dotted with historic buildings from coal's heyday.
Then-Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin took the microphone, urging the Tennessee Valley Authority to vote against shutting down the last coal-fired unit of the iconic Paradise fossil plant.
Peabody Coal fed the plant, the largest of its kind in the world when it opened in 1963, and made the county a top producer. The subject of John Prine’s song “Paradise,” the mines brought middle-class wages and glad-handing politicians seeking industry and union support.
Hopes were high for President Donald Trump, who had campaigned on a promise to revive the industry, to sway the TVA. He tweeted his support, and Kentucky’s powerful Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also pushed to keep the plant open.
But just days later, the TVA opted to close the coal-fired unit anyway.
“You’ve elected a person occupying the most powerful office on earth. So you think they can get it done,” said Jon Rogers, whose family coal company also fed the plant.
But, Rogers conceded, "There’s a limit to their power.”
The closure was a stark example of Trump’s inability to meet the promises he made to voters to reverse coal’s decline. Since then, a cascade of bankruptcies, coal plant closures and mine layoffs across the U.S. further diminished coal’s political clout.
Coal has shifted to the back-burner in the 2020 election — a far fall from the powerful role it played in influencing and financing past campaigns in major coal-producing states.
Hopes for the comeback that many politicians said they could help coal achieve are fading fast. And those politicians are talking much less about the "war on coal" that helped push them to past victories — if they discuss coal at all.
“Even President Trump now, he doesn’t talk about coal,” Rogers said. “You just don’t hear it.”
Politicians who need to win votes in coal country, including McConnell and his opponent in the Nov. 3 election, Democrat Amy McGrath, still pay lip service to the historically important resource. But it doesn’t dominate their stump speeches the way it once did.
Industry campaign donations spiked during the Obama administration with the creation of super PACs that funded campaign ads hammering home their message that Democrats were waging a so-called “war on coal.”
Now, contributions to federal candidates and PACs from the coal industry have suddenly plummeted — along with funding of state legislative races in Kentucky — as some of the top-spending companies reel from an industry seemingly in freefall.
The 'war' is over, but coal declines continue
While some candidates still invoke miners as a tried-and-true symbol of blue-collar America, the years-long criticism of the “war on coal,” which Trump, McConnell et al accustomed win votes, has quieted down.
McConnell declared triumph in a February column: “Together, President Trump and that i have concluded Obama’s restrictive war on coal. currently we’re doing all we will to repair the damage.”
In the interior of McConnell’s last election bid, throughout the second quarter of 2014, Kentucky’s mine employment destroyed 11,510 workers, recent authorities knowledge shows.
By the second quarter of 2016, once Trump was attempting to win the White House, that figure had born to 6,517 workers. And within the second quarter of 2020, when McConnell and Trump each command 2 of the most powerful positions in the U.S. government, Kentucky was down to 3,760 coal mine workers. Recent declines were also driven by the pandemic.
Concerning McConnell’s contention that he helped stop Obama’s “war on coal,” McGrath told The Courier Journal: “And he just lost 67% of coal jobs in Kentucky over the last six years. Is that winning, really? You know that was made up.
“The problem is he continually lied to people for decades telling them, ‘Oh, just vote for me, and I’m going to bring your coal jobs back.’ Well look around,” she said. “They’re not back.”
McConnell, Trump and others’ rhetoric that Obama’s “war on coal” was killing the industry was faulty, said Mark Thurber, associate director of Stanford University’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development.
“Objectively, it was never accurate,” he said.
Environmental regulations Obama instituted, and that Trump rolled back, were part of the challenges coal faced, Thurber said, but the major obstacle was economic competition from cheap natural gas.
“There is nothing that Trump and McConnell ever could have done to save coal short of … Soviet-style economics and governance,” said Thurber, who published a book on the coal industry last year. "And probably even that wouldn't have worked."
Few expect coal’s downward spiral to translate into significant declines in support for Trump or McConnell’s 2020 reelection bids, though.
As hopes of reviving the industry evaporate, Western Kentucky University political science professor Scott Lasley suggested the message candidates want to send now to people in coal country is: You’re not forgotten.
“If they still feel that Sen. McConnell and President Trump are still fighting for them and people in that region, they’ll be supportive,” Lasley said.
'They just want somebody to be honest'
In the tiny, red-brick historic downtown of Hazard, Kentucky, one building sports a Trump 2020 sign. Yard signs for McGrath might be seen dotting one neighborhood.
But so much fewer individuals are debating coal this year, aforesaid Terry Thies, the previous head of Perry County’s Democratic Women’s Club.
“That’s a giant amendment from years past,” she said. “Coal has continuously had a big influence in politics, till now.”
When McConnell was up for election in 2014, coal was a dominant issue in his race against Democrat and former Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.
McConnell created coal — and his opposition to Obama’s “war” on that — a central theme of his campaign, and even Grimes slammed the Democratic president’s fossil-fuel policies.
Six years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has dominated McConnell’s latest reelection race, though McConnell and McGrath have each made mentions of coal in campaign ads and were quizzed about it during their debate on Monday.
McGrath said voters in Eastern and Western Kentucky still bring up coal when they meet her.
“What I hear from miners and their families is they know that coal isn't leaving anytime soon. we tend to still want it … however it'll not be what it once was,” she told The messenger Journal. “And they simply wish someone to be honest this and have a thought for the future.”
McGrath claims McConnell hasn’t done enough to assist coal communities.
She points to the Senate’s failure, below McConnell’s leadership, to pass the RECLAIM Act, which might unencumber concerning $1 billion for cleansing up impure former mine lands and making ready them for development.
McGrath conjointly says bankruptcy laws should be modified to confirm miners are remunerated once a coal company goes bankrupt.
But McConnell and his 2020 campaign maintain he has accomplished a lot, within the face of great challenges, to facilitate the Kentucky families who rely upon this troubled industry.
“Mitch McConnell is Kentucky’s coal champion, and no-one has worked more durable or done a lot of in the Senate to safeguard coal communities than he has,” Team Mitch interpreter Kate Cooksey said.
The legislator has cited several samples of however he has worked to support coal firms and miners, including:
Securing legislation in Dec 2019 that prevented a serious pension account for miners from running empty;
Negotiating a deal in 2017 that organized for the permanent extension of health insurance benefits for retired miners and their dependents;
Ensuring the Senate scrapped the Obama-era “stream protection rule” that required stricter standards for mining-related water contamination and for restoring streams negatively impacted by such operations, which opponents said would put coal jobs at risk.
While McConnell hasn’t totally dropped the “war on coal” talking point, warnings about restarting that “war” may not pack as much of a punch as it did when Obama was still in office, University of Kentucky political scientist Steve Voss pointed out.
“Selling a war on coal was easier. Now those in charge can dangle threats of what might happen (if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected), but it’s less compelling,” he said.
Another reason coal has been less of a big deal during the 2020 election season may be because Biden doesn’t mention coal much, according to Murray State University political science professor James Clinger.
“There’s not an incumbent government or a rival presidential candidate who is attacking coal right now,” Clinger said. “So, it’s a less salient issue in that respect.”
'It was a huge block of votes'
Steering a pickup through Muhlenberg County’s rolling hills in Western Kentucky, Jon Rogers headed toward the towering smokestacks on the Green River that could be seen for miles.
At the Paradise plant, which burned its last load of coal in February, a truck sat loaded with equipment to haul out.
“That’s all the coal that’s left,” he said, pointing to some left-behind piles.
Rogers and his relatives, who own the Rogers Brothers Coal Co., long helped feed the plant, including leasing mining lands to Peabody and other operators. Rogers sold a smaller mining company in 2008 and now works as the land manager for the company.
In 2017, the TVA opened atiny lower gas-fueled plant nearby, using a small fraction of the coal plant’s workers. By 2019, the agency was disputation that the coal plant was outmoded, inefficient, facing maintenance problems which its retirement would save ratepayers millions — and it set to shut the coal unit.
The consequences for the county were swift. A mine referred to as Genesis operated by Murray Energy shortly folded, swing quite two hundred out of work. Murray itself later declared bankruptcy. By June, there have been 250 individuals still operating the county’s last mine, down from concerning 3,500 within the 1980s.
The fallout also extended to supporting industries such as truckers, ironworkers, pipefitters, and plumbers. “It was a big blow to our community,” said Judge-Executive Curtis McGehee.
The county slashed budgets and is scrambling to attract new industry to reclaimed surface mines. But it’s battling a population that’s too small for some large employers and also lacks education and training. Just 11% of residents have bachelor’s degrees.
McGehee said he realizes it was seen as a business call however feels TVA left the county hanging once taking advantage of its resources.
“I hear the speak Associate in Nursingd rhetoric. however I don’t suppose individuals have fought for the industry like they must have,” he said. “When it’s time for an election, it’s simple for a Democrat or Republican to mention they support the coal industry. however if they don’t act on it, then I don’t skills useful it is.”
Muhlenberg resident Steve Earle, the United Mine staff District twelve Vice President, has seen the political focus dim, too. His workplace is full of photos of coal and politics: Earle standing with President Bill Clinton, and United States President political campaign in an exceedingly WV coal camp.
With ton of} than 5,000 members at just the once within the area, he said, “we were a force to reckon with. it absolutely was a large block of votes. All the nonappointive officers solicited. They still do — however not as much...”
“For years after I lobbied in Frankfort, coal just about got what it wanted,” Earle explained. “I don’t suppose the industry has the clout it once did.”
His recommendation to those seeking jobs: “Don’t chase coal,” he said.
“A lot of coal miners simply want they’ve been abandoned,” he said, noting few see guarantees for restoring coal as a savior for jobs anymore. “I suppose a great deal of individuals have lost hope.”
Political giving mimics industry plunge
As coal jobs and production still plummet this year, therefore too are political campaign contributions from industry executives.
While the industry’s contributions to federal candidates and PACs quadrupled from the 2008 cycle to the 2012 cycle and neared $14 million in 2016, the foremost recent FEC filings show they need fallen to rock bottom level since before Obama took office.
The upward spike in coal industry giving throughout the Obama administration funded waves of TV attack ads against Democratic candidates, however those contributions have currently born as a number of the industry’s giants be monetary peril.
Leading the charge to defeat Democrats with their checkbooks once 2008 were executives from Murray Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody Energy and Arch Coal — but mostly Joe Craft, the corporate executive of Alliance Coal with robust Kentucky ties.
Craft not solely distributed the bulk of the $24 million in federal campaign contributions from Alliance since the 2010 cycle, but gave many thousands of greenbacks to Republicans’ efforts in Kentucky to win 2 races for governor and gain its initial majority within the state House in over a hundred years.
But because the trade began to collapse, therefore too did different companies’ ability to fill super committee coffers.
Alpha Natural Resources filed for bankruptcy in 2015, followed by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Arch in 2016.
Murray Energy contributed quite $1.5 million to federal candidates and PACs in every of the 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018 cycles, then pitched in precisely back of $100,000 in 2019 to return Kentucky Gov. Matt Ernest Bevin — who was narrowly defeated in Gregorian calendar month just days before the coal big sweet-faced its own reckoning and filed for bankruptcy.
In the 2020 cycle, Alliance and Craft alone currently account for quite 60% of the industry’s federal contributions.
A similar state of affairs has looked as if it would play get in Kentucky’s state legislative races this year, wherever industry donations are heading in the right direction to be rock bottom in years.
While Alliance created up 70-90% of industry’s many thousands of greenbacks spent on the politician races of 2015 and 2019 and also the legislative races of 2016 and 2018, Kentucky written account of Election Finance records show under $20,000 in coal industry defrayment on 2020 state legislative races as of early October.
More false hope not needed
In mines shortly from Hazard, William “Jay” McCool worked in coal for decades, doing jobs from roof-bolter to manager, extant rockfalls and a slowly declining job market.
But McCool, 66, like his father and grandfather, retired once he was diagnosed with pneumoconiosis disease, caused by inhaling coal dirt and silica, that has seen a recent resurgence.
Talking recently in an exceedingly diner in Perry County, he recounted traveling to Washington, D.C., last year with different miners to advocate for a lot of excise taxes on coal firms to assist fund the indebted pneumoconiosis incapacity Trust Fund, which supports disabled miners.
Some of the miners publically blasted McConnell afterwards for meeting with them solely briefly, however McCool aforesaid the old legislator secure to figure on the issue.
This spring, mining corporations wanted to own the tax reduced, citing the pandemic. The fund is in danger for financial condition if Congress doesn’t take action by the tip of the year.
He desires the centralized to form a commitment to the fund as a result of the revival of coal mining that might have boosted it ne'er came, he aforesaid.
“Trump said he’d bring miners back to work, however he didn’t,” he said, unsure of whether or not it had been Trump’s fault or others in government. Regardless, he said, “I don’t assume they even tried.”
The majority of Perry voters are registered Democrats but supported Trump, said Perry County Judge-Executive Scott Alexander, who calls himself a “God-fearing, gun-packing, coal-mining Democrat” who believes that national Democrats have “lost touch with rural America.”
But, over the past four years, he said he's seen hopes of a coal comeback fade.
“The politicians, they run these polls and see what issues the public is talking about — and if coal didn’t make the radar, then it’s not going to be discussed in the election cycle,” Alexander added. “And I think that’s the point where we’re at.”
Perry County saw coal employment drop 56% from the second quarter of 2020 compared to a year before, and coal jobs dropped 44% to 353, state statistics show.
In turn, the county’s budget has been further slammed by a steep drop in coal severance tax payments that are a tenth of what they once were, Alexander said. That's been coupled with declining property values and tax revenue.
Like other counties in a region that is among America’s poorest, Perry is struggling with cuts to services, a shortage of good-paying jobs and out-migration.
Alexander said his county is now focused on attracting new employers, which in recent years has included a drone testing facility and an aluminum parts manufacturer. So far, he's made promising progress in doing so, though such efforts are mixed across the region.
Much like guarantees a few coal revival, he aforesaid he’s careful to not build promises concerning new industries considering locating in his county before it happens.
“The final thing we want is another false hope,” he said.
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