Richard Ojeda, Democrat who once backed Trump, is running for president
The midterms are over, and one Democrat is looking to put his losing congressional bid behind him — by announcing his campaign for president.
West Virginia state Sen. Richard Ojeda (D), an Army veteran who's been described as "JFK with tattoos," filed documents to run for president on Sunday, Politico reports. Ojeda confirmed his candidacy in an email to supporters on Sunday and in an interview with The Intercept.
During the 2016 presidential race, Ojeda announced he'd vote for President Trump because he saw Hillary Clinton as a Democratic elitist, he later told The Intercept. He later retracted that support over Trump's zero tolerance policy that separated migrant families, and opposed the president as he ran against Republican Carol Miller for a West Virginia congressional seat this year. The district backed Trump by a 49-point margin in 2016, but Ojeda lost the seat by just 13 points and polls showed him beating Miller at one point.
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Ojeda will take a firmly populist approach to his presidential campaign, he told The Intercept, commenting that the Democratic Party "is supposed to be the party that fights for the working class." He'll focus on fighting corruption and uniting workers to build a base of support, branding himself as "a working-class person that basically can relate to the people on the ground," Ojeda said.
Ojeda is expected to expand on his presidential aspirations in a speech Monday at noon. Read more about his campaign at The Intercept.
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
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