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Could this 'military guy' Democrat find a magic formula to win back blue-collar voters?

When Richard Ojeda first comes into view, he barrels down the hallway like a bowling ball and with barely a pleasantry exchanged, he’s already on the attack.

“I’m fit’na light a fire today!” are nearly the first words out of the West Virginia state senator’s mouth. He’s animated about a state supreme court justice accused of bilking taxpayers with a lavish office redesign, including a $32,000 couch. “You’re gonna see how I roll, just wait.”

There is a wait indeed, as the session of the state senate dawdles on well into the night. Ojeda has to hold his fury until the last order of business around 8pm, and fellow lawmakers seem mostly uninterested by then in his dramatic call for impeachment.

“I’m a military guy, and these guys mess with my military time,” he says of life as a legislator after more than two decades spent jumping out of planes with the US army, retiring as a major after tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ojeda is part of a wave of blue-collar and military-minded Democrats challenging for congressional seats in the 2018 election in districts where Donald Trump won by double digits.

The district Ojeda is competing for: West Virginia’s third, where he was born and raised, elected Trump by an eye-popping 49-point margin. The current Republican House representative, Evan Jenkins, whose seat he is hoping to take, won by nearly as much.


Source :- theguardian

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