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West Virginia: Third District Rep. Nick Rahall (D) Last Updated July 14, 2003
Early in this century, the coalfields of southern West Virginia were one of America's boom areas. Into rural farmland and hollows, inhabited by the same families since they first arrived at these mountains 100 years before, came coal company lawyers with mineral rights' leases to sign, coal company engineers to design and sink the mineshafts, and men from other mountain counties, as well as Europe, to work the mines. Company houses were built, company stores were stocked with goods as the company dictated and company paymasters kept close tabs on the finances of every employee. These conditions bred dull discontent, ignited into the fire of industrial unionism by the tongue of John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, who organized most of the mines in the 1930s. Lewis was not only a militant unionist, but also an isolationist, and during and after World War II he called out his coal miners on strikes, to the fury of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. The entire national war effort and postwar economic recovery seemed gravely threatened by these labor stoppages involving some 300,000 workers, centered in back corners of the country like southern West Virginia. All that is history now. Coal is no longer central to the U.S. economy and there are only a few thousand coal miners left in southern West Virginia--and many are not UMW members anymore. Most of the old underground mines have been abandoned, leaving behind mineshafts and piles of tailings--and lives that were snuffed out by cave-ins or simple carelessness in America's deadliest industry. In 1950, when coal area population peaked, there were 560,000 people in the eight counties that made up the heart of southern West Virginia's coal country; in 2000, those same counties had a population of 334,000. There are few parts of the United States, apart from some central city neighborhoods and Great Plains farm counties, which have suffered such depopulation over the last half-century. But this region has still not hit bottom: Of seven counties in the nation with more than 20,000 residents that suffered more than 10% population loss in the 1990s, four--Logan, McDowell, Mingo and Wyoming--were in southern West Virginia, which has the oldest median age in the nation. The 3d Congressional District includes most of the mountainous coal country in the southern part of the state that are among America's most heavily Democratic jurisdictions (6 of the state's 10 top coal-producing counties are in the 3d). Democratic voter registration is around 90 percent in Logan and McDowell Counties; nearby Mingo County--"Bloody Mingo," where coal company enforcers battled Matewan miners seeking to escape economic serfdom--is equally monolithic. But the coal mining counties now make up less than half of the 3d District. About a quarter of the population is in and around the industrial city of Huntington on the Ohio River, which includes Marshall University. Another quarter is to the east, at the interstate junction at Beckley and in the farming uplands around the resorts of White Sulphur Springs where, at the Greenbrier Hotel resort, the government built a massive secret fallout shelter (code-named "Project Greek Island," the bunker was intended to house the entire U.S. Congress in the event of nuclear war) that was finally exposed in 1992. These two areas are much less Democratic than the coal counties. The congressman from the 3d District is Nick Rahall, a Democrat first elected in 1976, at 27; he was the youngest member of the 95th Congress. He comes from the thin economic upper crust of the coal country; his family owned radio and TV stations in Beckley and in St. Petersburg, Florida. Rahall has concentrated on bringing public works projects and jobs to his district. He got seats on Transportation and Infrastructure, and Resources early on, and now has great seniority. He was the chief sponsor in the House of the law requiring union and non-union coal operators to bail out the United Mine Workers health care funds. In 1998, Rahall criticized West Virginia regulators for improperly permitting mountaintop mining operations. This is a contentious local issue: 61 of 81 active mountaintop removal mines approved by state regulators since 1978 did not receive variances for flattening the land after mining is complete, according to an investigation by The Charleston Gazette. Rahall helped obtain $21 million in abandoned mine reclamation funds for 1999 and later sought to assure that the abandoned mine land reclamation program was used only to clean up high-priority projects. In January 2001, Rahall replaced California Rep. George Miller as ranking Democrat on the Resources Committee. That is undoubtedly a source of disappointment to environmental restriction groups, for Rahall is far more interested in parochial West Virginia issues than in the sort of issues--stopping oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), expanding wilderness areas in the West--which the groups use to raise money through direct mail from affluent East and West Coast urbanites. He did come out against opening more public lands--including ANWR--to energy production, and called for development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, which the Clinton administration approved in 1998. He spent more effort, and was opposed by Republicans, in getting money for a fund to cover the health costs of retired coal miners and their families. Two months before the 2002 election, Rahall traveled to Iraq on what was termed a humanitarian mission to assess that nation's health and nutrition. Rahall--whose family's roots are in Lebanon, and who often is in the small minority of members voicing support for Arab causes and voting against Israel--said, "I feel the Iraqis want to give peace a chance." Rahall has mostly won re-election easily; since his first election in 1976, he's dropped below 61% only once. That was in 1990, after opponents revisited negative publicity over gambling debts and a drunk driving arrest. But he had little to worry about in 2002. An auto-parts storeowner ran against him in the primary, but refused to debate because he said Rahall had better information; Rahall won 87% of the vote. In the general, his Republican opponent refused to campaign outside his home county; his only campaign expense was his $1,500 filing fee. He criticized Rahall for alleged financial ties to radical Islamic groups. Rahall responded that he backed George W. Bush's fight against terrorism. In the only West Virginia district carried by Al Gore, Rahall won 70%-30%.
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