There are a lot of people who loathe Don Blankenship, the former head of Massey Energy. Start with the coal miners, 29 of whom were killed in 2010 when an explosion ripped through Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. Then there are the employees who have accused him of verbal and physical harassment; neighbors whose drinking water was poisoned by Massey’s improper disposal of hazardous waste; rival businessmen Blankenship squeezed into bankruptcy; and Appalachians whose health has been impaired by the disastrous environmental effects of mountaintop removal, an extractive technique Blankenship helped pioneer.

But five weeks out from West Virginia’s May 8 primary, Blankenship, who has been dubbed “The Dark Lord of Coal Country,” and whose own lawyer argued three years ago that he couldn’t get a fair trial in West Virginia, is within striking range of winning the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. More than that, he’s got momentum. Internal polls released by two of his primary opponents show that Blankenship is within two points of leading what has become a three-way race for the right to challenge Democratic incumbent Joe Manchin.

His comeback is a result of nearly $2 million that Blankenship has dropped on television and online ads in West Virginia’s relatively inexpensive media markets. His rapid rise since joining the U.S. Senate race in December shows the power of spending to rehabilitate the image even of an individual who served a year in prison after he was convicted on a federal charge of systematically violating workplace rules at Upper Big Branch and covering them up.

“It’s like a thorn rubbing against you all the time, just nagging, nagging, nagging at you,” Gary Quarles, a former miner whose son was killed at the mine, said of Blankenship’s ad blitz. “His daughter is on there talking good about her dad, or there’s a few other people on there talking good about Don Blankenship. That man ain’t worth five cents. All he’s done is made money reaped off the coal they’ve raked out of West Virginia, and the hell with everything else.”

“Every time I watch one of his advertisements, my blood boils,” said Stanley “Goose” Stewart, a longtime Massey miner who worked at Upper Big Branch. “His ads are so full of lies, I get sick to my stomach. It’s all so much BS—just propaganda and lies, which is how he ran his coal companies.”