Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Greenbrier resort owner Jim Justice speaks with editors in the Charleston Gazette-Mail newsroom on Tuesday.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — In a state with the nation’s highest unemployment rate, in the midst of round after round of major budget cuts and with a gaping hole in the health insurance fund for state employees, here are a couple ideas that the vast majority of West Virginians can probably get behind:
1. “I am an absolute believer that we don’t need any more taxes in West Virginia.”
2. “I think we can cut ourselves into oblivion. I think that people have been cut enough.”
Both thoughts come from Jim Justice, billionaire coal and farming executive, owner of The Greenbrier resort and a Democratic candidate for governor.
The ideas are also, alas, in conflict, a point Justice recognizes.
“The same question just reverberates over and over and over,” Justice said in an interview this week. “Where’s the money going to come from? Where’s the money going to come from? And, really and truly, if all we keep doing is coming to the same place, the money isn’t going to come.”
Justice, for now, doesn’t have answers to that reverberating question. He said he’ll lay out a jobs plan in about 60 days.
Justice’s campaign, to date, is about selling himself as a man of big ideas, a guy who knows how to get things done and bring new revenue to West Virginia.
The source of that revenue is still to be announced, but Justice stresses his successes…
