Coalfield Roy
| ⛏️ | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 54-59 |
| Home | Logan County, WV |
| Demographic | Appalachian, white, union miner |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
A union coal miner in his late fifties in Logan County, West Virginia, with three decades of work underground. He is the cast's Appalachian populist, a lifelong Democrat who is the most left-wing persona on economic issues and among the hardest to reach on others.
Who they stand for
Roy stands for the Appalachian coalfields at a time when a series of disasters and scandals reshaped their politics. The Farmington mine explosion of November 1968 killed 78 men. The West Virginia black lung strike of February 1969 led to the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act and federal black lung benefits later that year. In December 1969, United Mine Workers president Tony Boyle had his rival for the union presidency, Jock Yablonski, murdered. The Miners for Democracy movement that followed put Arnold Miller into the union presidency in 1972, in the first successful rank-and-file overthrow of a national union's leadership. Wildcat strikes by miners ran through 1975 to 1977. A 111-day strike in 1977 and 1978 ended after President Carter invoked the Taft-Hartley Act against the strikers.
The region supported John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Democratic primary and Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 general election, then voted for Nixon in 1972 and Carter in 1976. Roy differs from Hamtramck Stan in how much he trusts organised labour. Stan still trusts his union's leadership. Roy trusts the miners he works alongside on his shift more than he trusts the union hierarchy, because of the corruption within the UMWA.
Playing to them
Roy responds well to mine safety enforcement, black lung benefits, Social Security, and any president willing to name the coal mine operators as his political enemy. Plain-spoken economic populism reaches him, but abstract policy language does not. He does not forgive a president who invokes the Taft-Hartley Act against a strike, who cuts benefits that he earned through a lifetime of work that gave him black lung disease, or who arrives accompanied by campus-style reformers.
Winning his support costs the support of Muncie Merle and Main Line Margaret, who object to the cost of these programmes, and Sun City Dot, who dislikes union power. Delta Earl shares Roy's cultural instincts but opposes his economic views, so a president can keep both of their support only by emphasising cultural issues rather than economic ones. Hamtramck Stan and Nonna Concetta are won over by the same economic programme that wins Roy. This makes Roy an inexpensive addition to a coalition built around organised labour, but a difficult one to add to a coalition built around business.
Where they live
The five states where Coalfield Roy makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- West Virginia
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
- Virginia
- Alaska