Does the Democratic nominee for governor of West Virginia support the Democratic president and the Democratic candidate to be the next president?
That's the latest battleground in the race for governor, which has re-emerged with new TV ads and angry news releases after the political lull that followed the recent devastating floods.
State Senate President Bill Cole, Republican candidate for governor, unveiled an ad this week that attempts to tie Jim Justice, the Democrat in the race, to President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Justice fired back with a news release calling, in his typical folksy manner, the claim that he supported Obama "complete dog snot." He went even further, saying that he voted for John McCain for president in 2008 and for Mitt Romney in 2012, remarkable (and unverifiable) claims for the Democratic candidate for governor.
"Why in the world would I ever contribute to Obama when he's taken millions of dollars away from my family's coal business and the hardworking coal miners of West Virginia?" Justice said.
While Republicans in competitive state-level races across the country have been wary of being tied to their presidential nominee, lest Donald Trump's record-breaking unpopularity rub off, the situation is reversed in West Virginia, where Trump is hugely popular.
Cole is embracing Trump ever closer, while Justice shuns Clinton.
Throughout this spring's primary campaign Justice steadfastly refused to say who he supported for president. His campaign, again, did not respond on Thursday when asked who he would vote for in the presidential race.
Cole's new ad, released to coincide with the two national parties' political conventions, charges Justice and his family with donating more than $60,000 to "Obama's re-election campaign."
The donations, made in October 2011 by Justice, his wife, son and daughter, actually total more than $120,000, but they were made to the Democratic National Committee, not to the Obama campaign.
The DNC certainly works in tandem with the Democratic presidential candidate, and it did work to help Obama get re-elected in 2011 and 2012. But it also works to elect state and local level Democrats.
Justice said that his donations were to support the re-election campaign of Steve Beshear, then the Democratic governor of Kentucky, not Obama.
His campaign was so eager to avoid the impression that Justice supported Obama that it sent a link to an unflattering article about environmental violations at Justice's coal mines.
"The federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement counts at least 266 pending violations in the five states against companies owned by West Virginia billionaire Jim Justice, who has hobnobbed with Beshear at Justice's glitzy Greenbrier Resort, and who - with his family - has contributed at least $400,000 to Beshear political causes since early 2011," said the 2014 article from the Louisville Courier-Journal, supplied by the Justice campaign.
The DNC did, in fact, give slightly more than $1 million to the Kentucky Democratic Party in October 2011, with payments made several days before and after Justice's family made their donations, according to Federal Elections Commission filings.
Justice, who has a long history of donating to both parties, gave, with his family, $200,000 to the Republican Governors Association one year later, in September of 2012.
Cole's attempt to link Justice to Clinton is more tenuous.
"Jim Justice says 'at the end of the day, we are united,'" Cole's ad says, with a picture of Justice overlaid against pictures of Clinton and Obama.
The quote, which comes from Justice's speech to the state Democratic convention in June, is out of context.
In Cole's ad it is spoken by the narrator, not by Justice.
"Justice never said that," Justice's campaign said. "He was clearly talking about moving forward with all the people of West Virginia after the primary for governor."
Audio of Justice's speech confirms that the quote comes from a section about the gubernatorial primary campaign, with no reference to Clinton or to national or presidential politics.
"We had two great men, other than myself, Jeff Kessler and Booth Goodwin. Now we come together. And we move on in the right way," Justice said. "You know we can bicker and we can argue, but at the end of the day, you surely got to be united."
While the national Republican Party remains divided, riven by Trump's controversial, race-baiting candidacy, there is no doubt where Cole stands.
He appeared with Trump at a rally in Charleston in May and uses footage from the rally in his newest ad, which refers to "the Bill Cole-Donald Trump team."
Reach David Gutman at
david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com,
304-348-5119 or follow
@davidlgutman on Twitter.