The New Yorker:

A progressive candidate hopes to break the coal industry’s hold on West Virginia politics.

By Dan Kaufman

On a snowy day in late January, Zach Shrewsbury, a thirty-two-year-old Marine Corps veteran, picked me up in his battered Chrysler 300, near the West Virginia state capitol. Our first stop was a gas station, where Shrewsbury bought a gallon of wiper fluid and, because his wiper hose had broken the night before, splashed it generously over his snow- and dirt-covered windshield. I asked where we were headed. Shrewsbury, who is bald with a full red beard, wore a camo baseball cap and a heavy red flannel shirt. He held up his right hand and gave the dashboard the finger. “You know, every West Virginian carries a map of the state with them at all times,” he said, laughing. The middle finger is the northern panhandle, the protruding thumb the eastern one. We would be crisscrossing the bottom of his hand.

Three months earlier, Shrewsbury had announced a bid for the U.S. Senate while standing in front of the Jefferson County courthouse, in Charles Town. This was where John Brown, the Kansas abolitionist, had been sentenced to death for his raid on Harpers Ferry. “Why am I honoring John Brown?” Shrewsbury asked a few dozen supporters. “We need a leader who will not waver in the face of these powers that keep the boot on our neck.” A few weeks later, his presumptive opponent in the Democratic primary, Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s senior senator, announced that he would not be seeking reëlection. Shrewsbury heard the news as he was driving through an abandoned coal town, and he pulled over to shoot a short video. “That puts me in a prime position,” he said. “I am of the working class. I am from our home. And I will fight for the everyday West Virginian.” During the next twenty-four hours, small donations began pouring in and his video was viewed as far away as France.

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