The West Virginia Broadcasters Association has excluded West Virginia Mountain Party gubernatorial candidate Jesse Johnson — the only candidate said to represent working people, women and the environment — from its statewide-televised debate Tuesday.

In what appears to be a trailer for a longer upcoming film chronicling Johnson’s efforts to earn the trust and votes of his fellow citizens, the third-party candidate speaks beautifully about the predicament facing voters at the local, state and national levels. He could be called mistaken only when he limits his comparison of the coal lobby-dominated West Virginia election to “Third World politics,” as the description applies equally to the trouble of American government at virtually every level.

“West Virginia politics is really more akin to Third World politics,” Johnson says. “It’s completely dominated by the extractive industries that control the state. There’s total collusion between those industries and government and media, and the emphasis is never on the people and their needs and their culture and their heritage.”

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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