It has been widely reported that Donald Trump is the favorite overall presidential candidate in the Mountain State.
But, whoa, we shouldn't forget Democrat Keith Russell Judd, 56, who is running for president again in West Virginia.
In the last presidential race, the Texas inmate garnered 42% of the presidential votes in the primary, although in actual voting numbers the Mountain State had the worst turn-out in the nation.
The candidate rose high in the polls because he was not Barack Obama.
This time around he is hoping to collect even more votes for not being either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.
Last time Judd ran his presidential campaign from his prison cell, but this season he has been released from a 17-year-sentence for making threats and he many actually stump around the state.
He has officially filed as a presidential candidate in at least seven states.
West Virginians "jumped on it," he said.
Judd, 56, who describes himself as a "Rastafarian Christian" and looks a lot like fellow back-of-the-packer Martin O'Malley â if the former Maryland governor had a three-foot-long graying ponytail â does have some campaign policies that go beyond simply being "none of the above."
He joins with many West Virginia politicos of both parties in decrying "Obama's War on Coal," and calling for federal funding to implement carbon sequestration technology.
He would be favored by WV voters who continue to endorse gun right.
Judd sums up America's foreign policy needs by saying "the United States must be the Big Dog in world politics" and "start slamming down the hammer."
While the above remarks are reminiscent of something that could have been said by Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Judd says economic policies favored by Trump and his boosters "are killing the middle class."
But Judd said he also thinks it's high time to end the federal government's War on Drugs, and proposes legalizing and taxing marijuana and other unspecified "street drugs."
The amount of revenue raised through a federal marijuana tax "would be astonishing," Judd said, as would savings generated by "immediately releasing at least 50 percent of all of our prisoners," since, as he has observed first-hand, "prisons are a waste of taxpayers' money."
"I don't think anyone is betting the farm that I am going to win the primary," Judd told the Dallas newspaper. "But you never know what's going to happen."
|