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  Liberal and Conservative Place: Charleston, WVThese are comments on Charleston, submitted by other Turn Left visitors. They do not necessarily represent the opinion of the webmaster. You may add a comment on Charleston if you want.  Capital of perhaps the most reliably Democratic state in the union, but this voting trend doesn't occur because "Mountaineers are always free" (our state motto), but because old reflex habits die hard. If you removed from the Democratic Party all the politicians in the thrall of the coal industry and otherwise chained to the trough ot business, then the remaining Democrats might find themselves in a minority.Charleston does have a stalwart liberal voice in The Charleston Gazette, but even this generally fine newspaper has great deficits-- it is owned by one of those fine old-money families, which means that it represents the silk-stocking "we know better than you do" sort of liberalism, rather than true populism or progressivism, and when liberal politicians and activists don't kiss the ring, then the Gazette will savage them with unrelenting hostility. (as Darrell McGraw and Charlotte Pritt, two leading liberal politicians.
Fortunately, Mountaineers are truly free in one respect-- we have low tolerance for bible thumping preachers, at least the sort who presume to tell everyone their business. People unfamiliar with West Virginia assume that our hollers are redoubts od bible thumpers, but in fact West Virginians have a flinty sort of libertarianism that over the years has marinated in a laid-back sort of mountain mellowness. As a result, the Christian Coalition and other assorted New Right villains do very poorly here. At heart West Virginia is too much of a party state! The full century of labor strife (UMWA v. cola barons) plus the desperate poverty that made us the poster child of the Great Society also have conditioned us to suspect big business and embrace big government. Most "liberals" I meet want a steady diet of cappucino and political-correctness, which you won't find here, but for good old-fashion "Roosevelt-coalition," blue-collar style liberalism, this place in many repects offers a pleasant surprise to outsiders.
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