Coal vs Obama

President Obama did one thing in the 2012 Kentucky presidential primary he didn’t do in 2008-he won it. This time, he won 58% of the vote, although 42% went to uncommitted delegates. Not that that means anything; Obama is the only Democratic candidate for President this year.

That, by the way, was the good news for the Obama camp. The bad news is he lost to uncommitted in about half of Kentucky, and one of the counties that saw him get flayed alive again was our own Pike County.

Yes, here the uncommitted vote took 65% of the vote. But considering how few votes Obama got in the 2008 primary in Pike County, you could say he did pretty well by comparison. Hey, you take your victories where you can.

At least it’s not like West Virginia, where a federal prisoner, Keith Judd, who is serving out a 17-year term in the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institute in Beaumont, Texas got over 42% of the vote against Obama.

Yeah, Obama took a drubbing in the 2008 primary in that state, but to have a federal prisoner run so close this time has to hurt the pride a little.

There was a well thought out analysis of the primary published in the Friday, May 25^th edition of the Appalachian News-Express that covered pretty much every factor that might have had some influence on these outcomes.

Of course, we all know that Obama’s war on coal, as defined by the various coal producers and associations that have been running negative ads against Obama for the better of his first term, had a large impact on how the vote turned out.

Obama’s war as waged by the Environmental Protection Agency has cost this area jobs, according to these ads. Well, no, not according the latest jobs numbers. In both Kentucky and West Virginia, coal jobs are at the highest levels since around 1997.

But we do have a lot to be thankful for in Pike County, or more specifically, in Pikeville. There is the Eastern Kentucky Exposition Center, for instance. We wouldn’t have that if it weren’t for coal, huh?

Not really. It seems that the Exposition Center was on the verge of closing when a deal was struck by the various governmental agencies that ran it to turn it over to the city of Pikeville.

Coal could have contributed enough money to keep the Center afloat by buying the right to name it, but they’d already contributed some $7 million to the University of Kentucky to name the new men’s basketball dorm the Wildcat Coal Lodge. Maybe next time, though.

Well, the city of Pikeville was able to take on the Exposition Center because it has such a progressive government. Their tax base, helped by the coal industry, is what made the difference, huh?

But those jobs in town because of the many construction jobs, on the new Judicial Center, the new building that will house the medical school at the University of Pikeville, and the new additions to the Pikeville Medical Center, have all been aided considerably by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the first major act of the Obama administration.

So maybe the reality is, even if Obama has helped this area, we don’t care. We just don’t like him.