---
title: "Coal Magnate Launches White House Bid: Campaign Update"
description: "(Bloomberg) --West Virginia coal magnate Don Blankenship, who served a year in federal prison for misdemeanor safety violations that led to the death of 29 workers in 2010, is running for president."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Newsdeck"
author: "Bloomberg"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/bloomberg/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-10-31-coal-magnate-launches-white-house-bid-campaign-update/"
published: "2019-10-31T22:32:13"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 370
---

# Coal Magnate Launches White House Bid: Campaign Update

> (Bloomberg) --West Virginia coal magnate Don Blankenship, who served a year in federal prison for misdemeanor safety violations that led to the death of 29 workers in 2010, is running for president.

By Bloomberg · Published 1 November 2019, 00:32 SAST

## Content

Blankenship filed a statement with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday establishing a campaign committee. He’s running under the Constitution Party banner, a third party that advocates abolishing real estate taxes, gay conversion therapy and a Muslim travel ban. He ran for Senate in West Virginia in 2018 but lost in the Republican primary.

The 69-year-old Blankenship was the CEO of Massey Energy, once the fourth-largest coal producer in the country. After the Big Branch Mine disaster, Massey was acquired by Alpha Natural Resources Inc., which later declared bankruptcy.

The Constitution Party’s 2016 candidate, Darrell Castle, came in sixth in the popular vote. But the party had some of its biggest success in states that could be close enough to give the party’s candidate a spoiler role, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida and Wisconsin.

GOP Ads Target House Democrats on Impeachment (1:29 p.m.)
The GOP didn’t waste any time trying to make hay of the House Democrats’ vote to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

Moments after the House’s 232-196 vote -- largely seen as a proxy for the eventual vote to impeach -- a super-PAC that supports House Republicans began an online ad campaign targeting voters in the districts of 29 Democrats who represent areas won by Trump in 2016.

The Congressional Leadership Fund’s ads, which will show up under Google searches for “impeach” or the representatives’ names, say they “just voted for impeachment” and are “with radical Dems not us.”

They direct to a website, impeachmentdemocrats.com, which encourages viewers to sign a petition, a standard way for political campaigns to harvest email addresses and other personal information for further targeting. -- Ryan Teague Beckwith

COMING UP
Fourteen presidential candidates, including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg are scheduled to speak on Friday at the Liberty and Justice Celebration hosted by the Iowa Democratic Party in Des Moines.

On Saturday, eight Democratic presidential candidates will attend a fish fry in Cedar Rapids hosted by Representative Abby Finkenauer, a first-term member of Congress.

--With assistance from Ryan Teague Beckwith.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Gregory Korte in Washington at gkorte@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net
Max Berley