Can a progressive campaign break the coal industry’s hold on West Virginia?  Photographs by Rebecca Kiger for The New Yorker Zach Shrewsbury, the thirty-two-year-old West Virginia Democrat running for Joe Manchin’s U.S. Senate seat, is a break with the past. He’s a full-time community organizer and a Marine Corps veteran—and he’s covered in tattoos. (“Thank God you look the way you do,” a Democratic National Committee consultant once told him. “I’m fucking sick of these haircuts and suits.”) Two decades of conservative policies have created dismal conditions in his state: undrinkable water in places; extremely low wages; the highest rate of opioid deaths in the nation; the second-highest child-poverty rate. Shrewsbury tells the reporter Dan Kaufman that his agenda centers on bringing in renewable-energy jobs—in direct opposition to politicians such as Jim Justice, the current Republican governor and leading Senate hopeful, whose license plate on his black Suburban reads “COAL 3,” alluding to the source of his personal fortune. “It’s an experimental campaign,” Shrewsbury tells Kaufman, as they travel together through the National Coal Heritage Area. “What have we really got to lose?” Since announcing his bid, the progressive candidate has driven more than thirty thousand miles in his Chrysler, and intends to visit all fifty-five counties in the state, where, as Kaufman shows, the role of coal power in politics has been predominant throughout its history. “Coal mining is the culture of West Virginia,” Shrewsbury explains. “But, this election, West Virginians will have a choice between the working man and the company store.” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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