Last month, I won the Democratic nomination to be the party’s candidate for U.S. Congress here in rural, north-central Pennsylvania.
This district is as ruby red as they come, and there’s a reason for that. Democrats have largely written off rural America during the past three decades in favor of a cosmopolitan and overeducated base that too often looks down on those of us living in “flyover country.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment during the 2016 election wasn’t a flub. She was speaking the exact sentiment of the party’s entrenched power establishment.
This is particularly true of the coal country where I was born and raised and which I am now seeking to represent in Washington.
Many former Democrats here left the party because they believed our party leaders were anti-coal. And frankly, they have a point.
In particular, former President Barack Obama, buoyed by his climate justice agenda, instituted executive actions that furthered economic hardship here in coal country.
He, like too many Democrats, wrongly believed that to be pro-climate, you must be anti-coal. That isn’t just flat-out wrong, but it’s harmful to hardworking Pennsylvanians.
Now, the Biden administration is continuing this trend with radical environmental policies whose sole intention is to shut down fossil fuel production altogether. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, for example, announced new rules last month that would put the thermal coal industry out of business in the next decade. And they’ve done next to nothing to help the thousands of workers who rely on the industry for a paycheck.
When Poland and Germany transitioned away from coal years back, the government retrained the miners or offered them a state-backed pension so they could retire. Here in the United States, Washington elites tell my people to “learn how to code.” Give me a break.
It wasn’t always this way. For centuries, my great-grandfathers worked the mines in the company towns, got paid with company scrip, and lived in shacks. They did their best to save and build a future for their posterity. And when my great-grandfather was a victim of black lung, his government didn’t discard him. It invested in him.
And it certainly didn’t deride him. Rather, Democratic leaders stood with the working class. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson observed our way of life and passed legislation in response to what they saw. They recognized that the coal industry is not just essential to America’s energy security but also to family bonds, livelihoods, and communities across the country.
My ancestors dug into the depths of the earth for my freedom, and because the government honored their sacrifices, my wife and I, and God-willing, one day, our children will have access to a life my great-grandfathers only dreamed of.
Today’s corporate politicians are too often handmaidens of the rich and powerful. But I’m fighting for the women and men of Pennsylvania who still sweat and toil in the state’s mines to ensure their children have a better life than they did.
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I might be a different kind of Democrat, but that’s precisely what the doctor ordered here in Pennsylvania, where a different kind of people built, mined, and forged America into the greatest nation on earth.
I won’t let insider trading, corporation-loving Democrats kick my kind out of the party. Not without a fight.
Zach Womer is the Democratic nominee for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 15th district.