Richard Ojeda

Politician

1970-09-25

Quotes by Richard Ojeda

• I lived in a bubble: my whole entire military career where I thought that everything was perfect. And I thought that every time we went overseas and we fought for this country, we were doing it because we were trying to get other people a sliver of the greatness that we have here in the United States of America.

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• I know coal is dirty, but that's all we got. So as much as I'd love to have clean energy - solar panels everywhere - right now, all we have is coal. The people I love, and the people that I grew up with, that's their livelihood, and I don't want to see them starve.

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• If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu.

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• We're not really a state. We're a colony. Everything we've ever had - timber, coal - it's all been extracted out of our state. Our people have been here and have worked in those industries, and they remained poor, but the people outside of our state that are the ones that come and get the timber, get the coal, have become billionaires.

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• I believe that if we are going to create jobs in this country, then let's create jobs that will absolutely put the working-class people at work to the point where they have one job. They don't have to work three because they have to work Wendy's, McDonald's, and Walmart to survive.

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• If you look at Middle America and the reason why it's so red is because the Democratic Party cannot relate to them. They definitely have not done anything to support people from where I come from in West Virginia.

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• The coal industry in West Virginia, when it is down, people can't buy cars; people can't eat in restaurants. Everything suffers.

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• Families in Logan, West Virginia, were going through the same struggles as families in the Bronx, San Francisco, and Houston. This was not a West Virginia problem. This is an American problem, and it has to change.

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• When President Kennedy come to West Virginia, he spoke about West Virginia and the people that gave the people here pride. And my family, my father remembers when President Kennedy was in Logan County and at places like the smokehouse, standing on chairs, talking to people.

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• You can't take a coal miner making $95,000 a year, the only work in these parts where you can support a family without having to hold down three jobs at once... and tell them, 'You can make minimum wage,' or, 'We can give you job training for jobs that don't exist in West Virginia.'

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• I cannot sit here and say I was beaten by Carol Miller. Because Carol Miller did not show up. She did not debate me. She basically avoided everything and just said, 'I'm with Trump, I'm with Trump.' And sadly, that's apparently a victory here in a place like southern West Virginia.

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• We have to stop letting people come in here and make millionaires and billionaires of themselves off of West Virginia while West Virginia remains poor.

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• The coal miners are working. But there's more than just coal miners in West Virginia.

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• If all you have is coal, that's the only thing that we have. Don't hate the coal miner for trying to get the only decent job that we have in West Virginia that can allow them to feed their family.

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• West Virginia built this nation... we deserve respect.

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