Gov. Jim Justice (right) and Babydog stopped at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute to sign House Bill 206 on Monday, Oct. 28, 2024, in Morgantown, W.Va. (Office of the Gov. Jim Justice | Courtesy photo)
Recently, at yet another event in which West Virginia Gov. and U.S. Senate candidate Jim Justice was customarily late, the usual politicking of shaking hands, being affable and performing the ceremonial duties of his were on full display. Gov. Justice loves that part of the job, the activity and excitement of live crowds, traveling around, “pressing the flesh” as the old time politicos called it.
Such events also bring a chance for the West Virginia press that Justice perpetually maligns to get a few questions in. Such as how the ratio of Big Event Governor Justice vs Details of Government Jim Justice currently stands.
“If you really believe the garbage that I don’t show up, or I’m not in the office, or whatever — I’m out with the people every day,” the governor remarked as reported by Erin Beck. “I’m not just sitting in an office down here, getting a gold star for perfect attendance.”
Which, to be fair to Justice, works pretty well in the waning days of a second term as governor. Personality goes a long way in a state that has always preferred its politicians to be colorful characters. Justice is unquestionably a people person, affable when he wants to be, savvy enough to realize Babydog is the greatest political weapon in West Virginia politics since Robert C. Byrd’s fiddle, and fully comfortable being in charge and playing the role of the great man.
The U.S. Senate does not function on personality. All 100 U.S. senators have big personalities, big brands, political organizations, wealth, power, influence. Most think of themselves as more important than even the president. A dozen or so U.S. senators at any given time are actively working to become president. The upper chamber of our American legislative branch is an elite political in-club second only to the presidency itself.
Wanting to be in an exclusive club is entirely consistent with the book we have on Justice. The problem is this particular club also has a job to do.
The perks of being a U.S. senator come automatically with election to the office, but getting one set of hands out of a hundred on the levers of power requires an entirely different type of politics. Power within the U.S. Senate comes slowly, from doing the committee work and politicking one’s way into committee chairs to steer money, investigations and influence. The title comes through election, but the power comes through attendance and attrition.
West Virginia has had a long run of very effective U.S. senators that mastered how the Senate game is played. Democrat Robert C. Byrd brought home the federal bacon to the point of it becoming a living, breathing caricature, but he mastered the political secret sauce of railing against Washington with one hand while milking federal funds from the District with the other at a relentless pace. Democrat Jay Rockefeller, another West Virginia governor turned U.S. senator, spent 20 years in the upper chamber and dealt with complex issues like co-authoring the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and expanding Veterans Affairs medical treatment and coverage. Retiring U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., often in recent years wielded so much influence as a crucial swing vote the question on the issues became “What do we have to give Joe to get this done?”
Jay Rockefeller’s successor, and soon to be senior U.S. senator from the great state of West Virginia, Shelley Moore Capito is another example.
“You can’t deny that she gets things done,” according to Eric Garcia, senior congressional correspondent for The Independent. “She’s on the appropriations committee … there’s the saying there are Democrats, there are Republicans, and then there are appropriators. Appropriators are the ones that write the budgets, they set aside all the money. When you have congress critters doing all their stuff, appropriators are the ones who sit down and decide how much money is going to be spent. And she’s also really effective at bringing money home..the latest budgets and appropriations she brings home a killing.”
Appropriation is not glamorous, but it is essential. Committee meetings are not fun, but required to work up to being a committee chair and steering policy. Mundane, routine votes in the well of the senate are repetitive activities that do not make for great social media posts.
But that is the job of a U.S. senator. Which makes the recent comments of Jim Justice that “If you really believe the garbage that I don’t show up, or I’m not in the office, or whatever…I’m not just sitting in an office down here” so telling. U.S. Senate work involves sitting in an office, and committee rooms, and meetings, and running a staff of aides and researchers. A U.S. senator has high profile moments in front of the cameras, but that doesn’t pass legislation, appropriate money, or benefit the state that senator represents.
“That’s why Robert Byrd has so many darn things named for him in West Virginia,” Garcia reminds. “Poorer states, states with less income, less high earners, need federal money to thrive.”
Going from an executive office like governor of a state with a friendly super majority legislative branch, after a lifetime of total control of a sprawling family business empire, to being a junior member of a narrowly controlled United States that will have major leadership changes in turbulent times would be a large adjustment for anyone. For Justice, whose larger-than-life persona, engaging manner, and Babydog accouterments were more than enough to win statewide office multiple times, the grind of Washington, D.C., will be a very foreign, hostile new world to navigate. How well Justice navigates that world in the office he is soon to be elected into will depend a great deal on how present and engaged he is. How committed he is to mastering the often mundane and archaic machinations of the self-styled “World’s greatest deliberative body.”
The success of Jim Justice, the U.S. senator, will have a measurable standard, a blunt standard polite folks don’t like to talk about but is the political reality that many depend on: how much money flows into West Virginia. Money that isn’t handed out based on personality, but on being present in positions of power to propagate those funds to the people who elected him to do so.
All the folksy sayings and Babydog pressers in the world will not add up to a red cent in federal funding for Toby and Edith, Jim Justice’s favorite allegorical West Virginians. Dedication to the grinding craft of being an effective U.S. senator will. For a state that has become very accustomed to highly effective U.S. senators and the national influence and vital funding that effectiveness brings, the potential for a dropping of that standard is — in Justice’s own words and actions — a very real possibility.
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