A retired Army paratrooper and West Virginia lawmaker seeking to restore the Democratic Party’s blue-collar roots chose Veterans Day to formalize his campaign for the presidency in 2020.
State Sen. Richard Ojeda filed his campaign committee paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday.
The military veteran known for his tattoos and populist message lost a congressional race to a Republican this month.
Ojeda, who is of Mexican descent, was elected to the West Virginia senate in 2016 and became a champion of teachers during their fight for better pay and benefits.
He sponsored successful legislation to make medical marijuana legal, and has stressed health care and economic issues in a district reeling from lost coal jobs.
I’m in: Richard Ojeda, a West Virginia Democratic state senator who lost his bid for the state’s 3rd Congressional district, used Veterans Day to announced he would run for president
On the trail: Army veteran Richard Ojeda’s cmapaign for Congress failed to pay off but the self-described populist says he will run for president
The 48-year-old told The Intercept that he would be a voice for ‘the dirt poor’, saying: ‘The filthy rich convinced the dirt poor the filthy rich are the ones who care.
‘We need someone in Washington, D.C. who’s going to be a voice for these people.’
He voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because he would not vote for Hillary Clinton, but later said he regretted that he did because Trump was not delivering what he had promised for blue collar workers.
But the president called him ‘stone cold crazy’ and a ‘total wacko’ during a campaign rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, before the midterms.
Ojeda lost the race for West Virginia’s third district 56-40, while Trump won the same district by 40 points in 2016.
Described as part GI Joe, part steadfast advocate for West Virginia’s working poor, and also ‘JFK with tattoos and a bench press’, he lost his bid to flip one of America’s most conservative congressional districts in last week’s midterm elections.
Impoverished Appalachia is a culturally conservative bastion on edge, ground zero in an opioid abuse crisis that has devastated families, and where wages are stagnant, health care costs are rising and the coal industry is gasping for air.
Two weeks before midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress, tough-talking Ojeda urged voters in West Virginia’s third district to swallow a dose of the economic populism he preaches.
‘I have no problems making some noise when they’re not doing right by the working-class citizens of this state,’ Ojeda told AFP in an interview in Huntington, where his insurgent campaign is based.
‘We’ve been absolutely duped and abused for far too long.’
After 24 years in the military with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, the muscular 47-year-old father pulled no punches when it comes to lambasting Republicans including Trump, for whom he voted in 2016.
Trump, campaigning for Republican foot soldiers during a rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, branded Ojeda ‘stone cold crazy.’
Ojeda’s response? Bring it on.
But he reserved his harshest criticism for those in his own party, which had dominated West Virginia politics for decades until Republicans snatched the legislature in 2014.
Two years later, Trump won Ojeda’s district by nearly 50 percentage points, among the largest margins in the country.
‘The reason why the Democratic Party lost power was because the Democrats sucked,’ Ojeda said.
‘That’s the truth. We have people that were in office for 30, 40 years,’ he said, pointing to establishment politicians ‘sticking their hand in the cookie jar.’
The parties’ demographic and cultural realignment shifted the state from deep blue to red in just a few years. Now, as Trump’s GOP fights to hold their majority in Congress, West Virginia Democrats aim to swing the pendulum back.
To do so they’ll need someone who fits in.
Enter Ojeda. He is a retired US Army paratrooper who often ends a speech or encounter with an exclamation: ‘Airborne.’
Tattooed on his back are the names of fellow soldiers killed in action. Some of his campaign staffers’ relatives have died of overdoses.
He supports gun rights and the coal industry, walks a delicate line on reproductive rights, and fumes about the prospect of health insurance companies discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
When West Virginia teachers went on strike in February demanding better insurance and higher pay, Ojeda was an early backer.
‘I’ve got Republican people from all over that have contacted and said ‘Look, we’re going to support you,’ because I say what needs to be said,’ Ojeda recalled.
‘A lot of them are just, they’re tired of the garbage.’
Ojeda returned home from military tours to a state ravaged by drug abuse.
In particular he blames the pharmaceutical companies that he says ‘sprinkle their Oxycontin and Hydrocodone on our people like Tic Tacs.’
But he also attacks the ‘fake leaders’ who receive massive contributions from the industry.
‘We got kids that go to bed hungry at night, we got elderly people cutting their meds in half, we got an opium epidemic ripping apart our community and that has killed thousands of our people, and we don’t have nobody that’s got the guts to stand up against big pharma,’ he said.
Ojeda decided to act, and ran for state senate in 2016. Weeks before the election he was nearly murdered when a man struck him in the head with a metal object.
Ojeda recovered, and won.
‘At the end of the day, if nobody steps up, I’m not scared at all,’ he said about a run for higher office. ‘I have no problems doing that.’
Hunter King, an 18-year-old son of a coal miner, says he will likely cast his first-ever ballot in November, for Ojeda.
‘He’s the person who has made me feel most like I have a voice,’ King said.
Not everyone is appreciative. Trump-voting bar owner Bob Ellison, of the town of Rainelle, called Ojeda an ‘arrogant’ pretender.
Ellison lost a daughter to opioid abuse and his son is hooked on methamphetamines. But Ellison waves away suggestions that Ojeda could help end the crisis.
‘I believe Republicans are going to take care of it,’ he said.
WHO ARE ALL THE DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 2020?
JOHN DELANEY
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 57
Entered race: July 28, 2017
Career: Three-time Maryland congressman. Previously set up publicly-traded companies lending capital to healthcare and mid-size businesses
Family: Married father of four; wife April works for children’s issues nonprofit
Views on key issues: Social liberal in favor of legalized pot and gun control but not single-payer healthcare and fiscally conservative
Slogan: Focus on the Future
ANDREW YANG
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 46
Entered race: November 6, 2018
Career: Started a dotcom flop then become healthcare and education tech executive who set up nonprofit Venture for America
Family: Married father of two; would be first Asian American nominee
Views on key issues: Warns of rise of robots and artificial intelligence, wants $1,000 a month universal basic income and social media regulated
Slogan: Humanity First
RICHARD OJEDA
Age on Inauguration Day 2021: 50
Entered race: November 12, 2018
Career: Tattooed Army paratrooper officer with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan awarded disability by VA; then high school teacher and West Virginia state senator. Lost 2018 run for Congress
Family: Married father of two; wife is paid caregiver for his combat-related disabilities; grandfather was illegal immigrant from Mexico
Views on key issues: Populist union booster who backed teachers’ strike in West Virginia; wants lobbyists banned; voted for Trump in 2016 but regrets it
Slogan: To be announced