Last Thursday, at a restaurant in Bluefield, West Virginia, called Macado’s (rhymes with “wackadoos”), Don Blankenship, the convicted criminal, former coal executive, and current Republican Senate candidate, held a town-hall meeting for his supporters. At one point in the evening, a retired miner named Delbert Bailey stood up to speak. Eight years earlier, he had taken time off from work at the Upper Big Branch mine to go fishing, narrowly avoiding a gas explosion that killed twenty-nine members of his crew. At the time, Blankenship was the multimillionaire C.E.O. of Massey Energy, the company that owned the mine. After the disaster, a federal jury found him guilty of a misdemeanor count of “conspiring to willfully commit mine-safety violations,” and sentenced him to a year in prison. (One of the tables at Macado’s held copies of “An American Political Prisoner,” the pamphlet that Blankenship wrote in his cell, alongside trays of sliced meat and cheese.) Most of the victims’ families blamed Blankenship for the tragedy, Bailey said, but he didn’t. “Everybody had a little part to play in it,” he said—the mine’s managing foremen, federal inspectors, and Massey executives. “Everybody knew something about what was going on.” Blankenship, standing next to him, looked uncomfortable.

Blankenship was released from the Taft Correctional Institution, in California, last May and announced his senatorial bid six months later. Since then, he has spent more than a million dollars of his own money on the campaign, flooding West Virginia’s airwaves with pledges to bring back jobs, curtail abortion rights, fight the opioid epidemic, and build a border wall. (West Virginia has one of the smallest immigrant populations in the country.) Blankenship has consistently portrayed himself as a Washington outsider and a Trumpian warrior for the common man. As he said at the town hall, governing “is not a matter of mental capacity; it’s a matter of political courage.” Now, to virtually everyone’s surprise, he appears to have a chance of winning the G.O.P. nomination and facing the Democratic incumbent, Senator Joe Manchin, in November. The latest polls show him tied with or edging out his two main rivals, Representative Evan Jenkins and the state attorney general, Patrick Morrisey.

The Republican leadership in D.C., fearful that it could have another Roy Moore on its hands (Moore recently lost a special Senate election in Alabama, following allegations of sexual misconduct), has vigorously opposed Blankenship’s candidacy, particularly in the past few weeks. Shortly before the event at Macado’s, the President’s eldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., tweeted, “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and ask the people of West Virginia to make a wise decision and reject Blankenship! No more fumbles like Alabama.” (“My son says a lot of things I wish he didn’t say, too,” Blankenship told me.) Last week, the candidate struck back against the political establishment in a pair of ads, one of which referred to Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, as a “swamp captain” with a “China family.” (McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, was born in Taiwan.) “He attacked me and called me despicable and mentally ill,” Blankenship said. “He started it.” Later, in a radio ad, Blankenship said, “I will represent West Virginia people, not China people. I am an America person, and I will put America first.” On Monday, President Trump echoed his son, urging West Virginians to vote for Jenkins or Morrisey.

The morning after the town hall, Bailey took me on a tour of a defunct coal mine in Beckley, his home town. He had recently spent a few months there as a guide, regaling tourists with stories about local history and his father and grandfather, who were also miners. When we met up, Bailey told me that his wife was angry with him about his comments at Macado’s. “She said, ‘You was on TV!’ She said, ‘We’re gonna get repercussions.’ ” In their community, Bailey explained, supporting Blankenship is a no-no. He had first found that out during the Upper Big Branch trial, in 2014, when he had stopped in to watch the proceedings one day, joining the deceased miners’ families in the gallery. “There wasn’t nothing there but hate,” he said. Afterward, Bailey approached Blankenship and shook his hand. “He didn’t mean for none of that to happen, and I wanted to let him know that I stood behind him,” Bailey told me. “But I took a tongue lashing in the elevator. Someone said to me, ‘I hope you get run over by a train.’ ”

Bailey and I fell in with a group of elementary-school kids and boarded a rail cart that ran through the mine. Partway through the ride, our conductor, Marwin, shut off the electricity. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand when I held it an inch from my face. Later, Marwin began demonstrating various tools, and Bailey called out that he had forgotten to mention the one that monitors methane-gas levels. Bailey launched into a technical description that soon had me—and, I imagine, the children—lost. Perhaps that’s why Marwin had skipped it. But Bailey’s job at Upper Big Branch had been monitoring methane levels; even if it was only a demonstration for eight-year-olds, he wasn’t going to let it go. We emerged back into the sunshine as another school group passed by. “That was so cool!” one of the kids yelled.

Later that afternoon, I drove to the town of Glen Daniel, not far from the Upper Big Branch mine, which is now sealed. Sherwood Brown, the manager of Davis Auto Parts, a local hangout, was holding court behind the counter. A self-described tree-hugger, Brown said that he was “the exception here.” He has a windmill at his house, voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and holds five black belts in martial arts. As the only African-American student in his school when he was growing up, he said, “I decided to start learning karate when I was six.” Like many people in the community, he knows people who died in the 2010 tragedy. “I lost a couple buddies down in U.B.B.,” Brown said. “One of them taught in one of my karate schools, and one of them was a student.” As for Blankenship, he added, “Most of the guys I talk to really don’t support him very much. They don’t trust him.”

Further Reading New Yorker writers on the 2018 midterm elections.

A giant of a man named Mike Cline, a regular at the shop, was sitting at a counter stool. He used to be a miner but now owns what he called “a working man’s golf course” nearby. It has no dress code, and used to attract miners on their way home from work. These days, though, there are so few left that barely anyone comes by. Cline was ambivalent about Blankenship. “You can’t blame him for everything,” he said. “He probably didn’t know any more about what was going on in that mine than me or you. He had bosses.” Another man who stopped in said that he had quit working at Upper Big Branch not long before the explosion. He said that it was mostly the foremen’s fault, then shook his head and would not say any more, afraid that it would get back to Blankenship’s network.

After the town hall ended, Blankenship left Macado’s alone. I had more questions and said I’d follow him out. “In another situation, that wouldn’t be a bad thing,” he said, holding the door for me. “But I don’t think that’s what you had in mind.” We stepped into the parking lot. “You’re not allowed to see my car,” he said. “It’s got Nevada plates.” (Blankenship’s opponents have criticized him for spending most of his time at his home in Las Vegas, where his fiancée lives.) As he looked for his keys, he began telling me about how he used to travel around the country with his son, who competes professionally in rally-car races. “I can’t drive across state lines,” he said. “Until Wednesday!” The day after the primary, his year-long probation will end.

Suddenly, Blankenship turned to me and said, “Are you a bad person?” I try not to be, I replied. “Well, most reporters are bad people,” he said. “But maybe they don’t know it.” We exchanged business cards. He told me to hold on to his for when he’s President. “If Trump gets in my way, I’ll just run against him,” he said.