Don Blankenship

Life and career

Blankenship was born in Stopover, Kentucky and raised in Delorme, West Virginia. His father served in the Korean War and his mother, Nancy McCoy, was a member of the McCoy family; they divorced soon after Don was born, and Don's mother ran a convenience store and gas station with her divorce settlement money for 40 years. Three years after graduating from Matewan High School, West Virginia, he earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Marshall University in 1972. He was the recipient of Marshall University's "Most Distinguished Alumni" award and inducted into the Lewis College of Business Hall of Fame in 1999.

Blankenship is certified as a public accountant. In 2002, he was inducted into the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' Business and Industry Hall of Fame and, in 2002, was recognized by the West Virginia Society of Certified Public Accountants as an Outstanding Member in Business and Industry. Blankenship was also inducted into the Tug Valley Mining Institute Hall of Fame.

Blankenship joined a Massey subsidiary, Rawl Sales & Processing Co., in 1982. Since then he has served the company in a number of capacities. He was promoted to president of Massey Coal Services, Inc. (1989–1991), then president and chief Operating Officer from 1990 to 1991.

In 1992, Blankenship was named president, chairman of the board of A.T. Massey. He is the first non-Massey family member to be in charge of the company. When A.T. Massey was spun off from Fluor Corporation as Massey Energy in 2000, Blankenship became the newly independent company's chairman and CEO.

He also serves as a director of the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a director of the National Mining Association, Mission West Virginia Inc, and was on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

He is divorced and lives in Rawl, West Virginia. Blankenship has two children. His son, John Blankenship, is a dirt track car racer, although his father has shut down his team and put its assets up for sale.

McCoy Coal Group

In 2011, Blankenship incorporated a coal company in Kentucky named McCoy Coal Group (not to be confused with the James River Coal Company subsidiary McCoy-Elkhorn Coal Corp). McCoy has yet to seek mining permits.

In 2012, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Blankenship stated, "It is easier to make money in the stock market than coal". He also stated that he didn't have plans to seek mining permits or buy up reserves.

Upper Big Branch explosion

On April 5, 2010, an explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine killed 29 miners. It was the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since 1970, when an explosion killed 38 in Hyden, Kentucky. In 2006, a fatal accident at Aracoma Alma (also owned by Massey Coal Co.) was one of the explosions prompting Congress to upgrade federal mine safety laws for the first time since 1977. As Blankenship came under increased scrutiny, a Business Week article said that he had a reputation for resistance to spending money, willingness to litigate, and personally going into mines to persuade workers to abandon union organizing efforts. On April 12, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the sole trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund which holds 303,550 shares of Massey stock worth about $14.1 million, called for Blankenship to resign immediately. "Massey's cavalier attitude toward risk and callous disregard for the safety of its employees has exacted a horrible cost on dozens of hard-working miners and their loved ones," DiNapoli said in a public statement reported by Reuters and others. "This tragedy was a failure both of risk management and effective board oversight. Blankenship must step down and make room for more responsible leadership at Massey." On April 22, Massey Energy's lead independent director Bobby R. Inman announced that "Blankenship has the full support and confidence of the Massey Energy Board of Directors." On April 25, President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and state officials paid tribute to the 29 coal miners at a memorial service in Beckley, West Virginia.

The former superintendent of a U.S. mine at the time of the Upper Big Branch mine explosion pleaded guilty in March 2011 to a federal fraud charge. "Prosecutors said Massey manipulated the ventilation system during inspections of the Upper Big Branch mine to fool safety officials and disabled a methane monitor on a cutting machine a few months before the explosion on April 5, 2010.... ...Prosecutors have refused to say whether they are targeting former Massey CEO Don Blankenship, whose company was cited for violations so frequently that union critics accused him of regarding fines as simply the cost of doing business....

In March 2013, at a plea hearing in a federal court, Blankenship was directly implicated in conspiring to skirt safety regulations. A former Massey Energy official accused Blankenship of conspiring and plotting to hide safety violations from federal safety inspectors. The implication was that Blankenship would order his officials to warn mine operators when the federal inspectors were coming for "surprise" visits, and to quickly cover up any safety violations.

Blankenship went on to serve a one-year prison sentence. He called himself a "political prisoner", feuded with United States Senator Joe Manchin and the Mine Safety and Health Administration over the explosion, considered running against Manchin for the Senate, and called for a new investigation into the explosion.

Controversy

Warren McGraw

In 2004, Blankenship contributed $3 million to the "And For The Sake of the Kids" PAC, campaigning against the re-election of West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. Brent Benjamin would go on to defeat McGraw in the general election. Speaking about the election, Blankenship said, "I helped defeat a judge who had released a pedophile to work in a local school, who had driven doctors out of state, and who had cost workers their jobs for thirty plus years. I think this effort helped unchain West Virginia's economy and benefited working families." However, USA Today called Blankenship's ads "venomous." According to a USA Today editorial dated March 3, 2009, Blankenship "has vividly illustrated how big money corrupts judicial elections. It puts justice up for sale to the highest bidder."

Washington political journalist Michael Tomasky, himself a native West Virginian, claimed that Blankenship was "famous in West Virginia as the man who successfully bought himself a State Supreme Court Justice in 2004 and then tried to buy himself the state legislature, failing spectacularly at the latter effort." Tomasky wrote:

The Justice he succeeded in having replaced in 2004 was Warren McGraw. McGraw was up for reelection in 2004, and Blankenship wanted him out. That McGraw had sided with workers was not likely to stir much passionate opposition, so Blankenship found a case in which McGraw had been part of a 3–2 majority that had freed a mentally disturbed child molester who then went to work in a school. Blankenship established and funded an independent tax-deductible group called "And for the Sake of the Kids," which ran ads attacking McGraw's part in the decision. McGraw was defeated, and Brent Benjamin, the conservative candidate took his seat on the court. To demonstrate that his interest in the children was sincere, Blankenship had vowed that after the election, he would endow a foundation to help the state's needy children.

Michael Shnayerson, in his 2008 book Coal River, reports that no such foundation was ever set up and that Blankenship's tactics didn't help other Republicans in the state. In 2006, the $3 million that he had provided to forty Republican challengers to Democratic state legislators brought just a single victory. Although Blankenship was the primary donor to "And For the Sake of Kids," other groups, including Doctors for Justice, contributed over $1 million to ASK. Another group, Citizens for Quality Health Care, which was funded in part by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, spent over $350,000 to defeat McGraw. Meanwhile, several groups spent millions opposing Benjamin and supporting McGraw, including West Virginia Consumers for Justice and Hugh Caperton, CEO of Harmon Development Corporation.

Blankenship is featured in Laurence Leamer's 2013 book, The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption and in Peter Galuszka's 2012 book, Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal.

Justice Spike Maynard

On January 15, 2008, photographs of Blankenship vacationing on the French Riviera with West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard, while Massey had a case pending before that court, appeared in the New York Times. On April 3, 2008, ABC News reported that Blankenship attacked an ABC News photographer at a Massey facility near Belfry, Kentucky as the photographer attempted to question Blankenship about the photos. "If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot!" Blankenship stated in the video. Justice Maynard later lost his bid for re-election to the West Virginia Supreme Court in the West Virginia primary election. On February 14, 2009, Blankenship told the New York Times, "I've been around West Virginia long enough to know that politicians don't stay bought, particularly ones that are going to be in office for 12 years... So I would never go out and spend money to try to gain favor with a politician. Eliminating a bad politician makes sense. Electing somebody hoping he's going to be in your favor doesn't make any sense at all."

Political views

Blankenship is a Republican and an active participant in West Virginia politics. During a speech at the Tug Valley Mining Institute on November 20, 2008, Blankenship called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid and former Vice President Al Gore "crazies" and "greeniacs." In the same speech, he also stated, "I don't believe climate change is real." He associated President Jimmy Carter's support for energy conservation in the 1970s with communism: "Buy a smaller car? Conserve? I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia and China, and that's the first stage." Blankenship's views on global warming were reiterated in interviews conducted by The Hill and Forbes.

In a letter to the editor of the The Charleston Gazette dated October 30, 2009, Blankenship denied that climate change, or "global warming," existed, and stated: "Why should we trust a report by the United Nations? The United Nations includes countries like Venezuela, North Korea and Iran."

At a 2009 Labor Day pro-coal rally in West Virginia, Blankenship expressed his true views on the role of the federal government and state authorities in ensuring miner safety:

We also endure a Mine Safety and Health Administration that seeks power over coal miners versus improving their safety and their health. As someone who has overseen the mining of more coal than anyone else in the history of central Appalachia, I know that the safety and health of coal miners is my most important job. I don't need Washington politicians to tell me that, and neither do you. But I also know — I also know Washington and state politicians have no idea how to improve miner safety. The very idea that they care more about coal miner safety than we do is as silly as global warming.

In a 1980s documentary, he stated "It's like a jungle, where a jungle is survival of the fittest. Unions, communities, people — everybody's gonna have to learn to accept that in the United States you have a capitalist society, and that capitalism, from a business standpoint, is survival of the most productive."

Charity

Blankenship founded Massey Energy Spousal Groups, which led all charitable work for the company and its employees. The Massey website described the company as providing "financial support to the Groups as they assist children, the elderly, fire departments and many other deserving individuals and programs. Projects included town and stream cleanups, school book fairs, local park improvement, senior citizen appreciation dinners and the annual Christmas Extravaganzas."

In October 2012, Marshall University announced that Blankenship committed $300,000 in scholarships for students attending the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. The pledge was made in the name of Blankenship's mother, Nancy Marie McCoy, and $100,000 of the pledge was received in early September 2012.