Mingo County Crystal
 | |
| Era | The Nineties |
|---|---|
| Age | 28-40 |
| Home | Mingo County, WV |
| Demographic | rural white, poor, intermittent work |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
| Successor | Pike County Brenda |
A mother of two in a rented trailer in the West Virginia coalfields, who works whenever the dollar store or the diner needs her. She is poor, white, rarely polled, rarely votes, and has never been directly courted by a campaign.
Who they stand for
Coal jobs in West Virginia kept falling as longwall machines and mountaintop removal replaced miners, leaving Mingo County with disability cheques and the dollar store. Welfare reform in 1996 replaced AFDC with time-limited TANF, and a caseworker's rules became the only government she deals with directly. In the coalfields, a disability payment functions as the closest thing to a pension. Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin that year and marketed it heavily where miners had been injured, so pills reached households like hers as prescriptions before the region's overdose deaths were counted. Crystal's voting pattern mirrors that of West Virginia as a whole. The state voted for Clinton twice, then for Bush in 2000, its first vote for a non-incumbent Republican since 1928. The state turned partly on guns, coal, and resentment at being lectured by outsiders.
Crystal represents a kind of poverty the national welfare debate rarely mentioned by name. Baltimore Kiana represents the kind of poverty that debate was actually about. Ozark Wayne shares Crystal's distrust of government, but a local VFW post supports him, and Crystal has no equivalent institution. Her successors are Pike County Brenda, whose daughter takes the pills, and Appalachian Amber, who nurses the overdoses.
Playing to them
She responds well to help that is simple to receive. This includes leaving food stamps alone, paying disability cheques on time, keeping the local hospital open, providing a job at the store, and a president whose staff are seen in Williamson. She will not forgive a caseworker's new rule, a speech about personal responsibility, or being told what she should have done differently. She has heard all of this before from people who, unlike her, have a secure pension. Winning her support costs almost nothing elsewhere in the cast. Greenwich Chip and Bitterroot Dale object to the extra spending, and workfare rhetoric that wins Bay Ridge Kevin and Bensonhurst Rosalie loses her along with Baltimore Kiana. Guns are left alone.
The difficulty with Crystal is that a favourable opinion does not automatically become a vote. She is not registered, nobody calls her before an election, and nobody offers her a ride to the polling place. A president who keeps her favourability high but never organises the county gains nothing from her support. The 2000 election in West Virginia is a warning about this. A Democrat who takes her support for granted is the one who loses the state.
Where they live
The five states where Mingo County Crystal makes up the largest share of the electorate in the nineties:
- West Virginia
- Kentucky
- Tennessee
- Maine
- Arkansas
Lineage
Mingo County Crystal → Pike County Brenda → Appalachian Amber
Appalachian white women and the opioid crisis in three stages. In 1995 the pills are reaching Crystal's family before anyone calls it a crisis. In 2006 Brenda's daughter is addicted. In 2019 Amber treats the overdoses as a nurse. The vote follows. Crystal rarely votes. Brenda inherited a Democratic vote and votes Bush over guns, religion and her son in the Army. Amber has given up on both parties and votes for whoever funds addiction treatment and the local hospital. Amber is Brenda's daughter who did not take the pills.