“The reason I can’t be is her position on coal is diametrically, completely wrong in many, many different ways,” Jim Justice says. | AP Photo Democratic gubernatorial candidate in West Virginia says he can't support Clinton

As a growing tide of Republicans distance themselves from their party’s presidential nominee, at least one Democratic candidate is doing the same thing to Hillary Clinton.

West Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Justice said “I cannot be a supporter of Hillary Clinton” during an appearance Monday on the state’s MetroNews radio network. Justice, a billionaire whose business interests include coal mining and West Virginia’s famed Greenbrier Resort, said he will not support the former secretary of state over her proposed energy policy.


“The reason I can’t be is her position on coal is diametrically, completely wrong in many, many different ways,” Justice said.

Clinton has been haunted in West Virginia, the heart of coal country in the U.S., by a town hall meeting she held there last March during which she said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” with a transition to clean energy options. GOP nominee Donald Trump has regularly used the remark against her in his stump speeches and has held rallies in West Virginia’s coal country.

The former secretary of state badly lost the Democratic primary in West Virginia to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), 51 percent to 36 percent.

Citing his own personal wealth, Justice distanced himself from presidential politics and the national Democratic Party, suggesting instead that he is running only to benefit West Virginians. While he said he will not support his party’s nominee, Justice would not say for whom he planned to vote in November’s general election.

“My reason that I ran for governor was not the presidential race; my reason I ran for governor is West Virginia and our people in West Virginia,” he said. “I don’t need to be governor for me in any way, shape, form or fashion. I need to be governor for West Virginia.”

“Just because we have a specific person that’s running for the highest office in the land doesn’t mean that I’m going to just rubber-stamp it. I don’t rubber-stamp anybody,” Justice added.