Coal Miners Won’t Back Obama This Time -- The United Mine Workers of America enthusiastically supported Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, but this year the union and its disgruntled members don’t plan to back Obama’s re-election bid.

“As of right now, we’ve elected to stay out of this election,” said Mike Caputo, a vice president on the UMWA’s International Executive Board and a Democ
ratic member of the West Virginia House of Delegates.

“Our members right now have indicated to stay out of this race, and that’s why we’ve done that.”

Caputo told National Journal he couldn’t remember a time when the UMWA — with more than 100,000 members in 2008, the last year the union updated its numbers — did not endorse a presidential candidate.

Obama’s GOP opponent Mitt Romney has been claiming that Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is waging war on coal with too many regulations.

“Our members count on coal-fired power plants and burning of coal to keep jobs,” Caputo said. “We’re a very Democratic union and we try to listen to the rank and file. They’ve sent a clear message that they’re not supportive of the environmental rules that are being put in place.”

An increase in natural gas production has contributed to a decline in the demand for coal. But politically, the EPA “is the culprit for the coal industry’s woes,” National Journal observed.

“Throughout Appalachia where Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia converge, the coal industry’s disgruntlement with Obama is plastered on yard signs and billboards.”

One billboard near the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border, sponsored by a coal-industry group, tells drivers they are entering “the Obama administration’s no jobs zone.”

Four years ago, UMWA President Cecil Roberts said Obama “understands that coal will remain a primary source for electricity generation in this country for many decades to come. Obama will work to ensure the future of American coal and the jobs that go with it.”

But this year Roberts made a reference to terrorism to describe the actions of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, stating in a radio interview: “The Navy SEALs shot Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington.”

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