Reflections for Independence Day in our Mountain State
By Matthew Young, RealWV
As I write this, it is the evening of Thursday, July 3 – which is now apparently called Julird. And with Friday being Independence Day, I figured this was a great time to reflect back on where we are culturally and politically as a state, and as a nation.
What are the odds I can keep this reflection to 272 words? Wouldn’t that be something…
Starting at the top, we have President Donald Trump. What a crazy time in American history this past year has been. The last six months of his campaign was like House of Cards come to life, and the first six months of his presidency has been a non-stop roller coaster of controversy. Will-he-won’t-he-he-sure-will tariffs, using the military against U.S. citizens, giving Ukraine the middle finger, dropping bombs on Iran – love him or hate him, Trump never fails to make an impression.
Most national polling data shows Trump’s job approval rating hovering right around 45%. In the last month its dropped as low as 40%, and if I had to guess I’d say that at some point in the next 42 months it’ll get as high as 60%. But that’s to be expected with a country so evenly divided between left and right, and we’re about as divided as we’ve been in 160 or so years.
Although Trump-country through and through, the Mountain State’s balance of political ideologies is a bit more even than it would seem at first glance. As of June 30, there are 1,184,101 registered voters in the state of West Virginia. Approximately 499,000 of them are Republicans, and right around 334,000 are Democrats. The Libertarians are a far-distant third with just under 11,000 registered voters.
Republicans outnumber Democrats in all but four counties in West Virginia – sometimes by a huge margin, and other times by the thread of their red ties. But it is another bracket of voters – those in the middle who tend to be acknowledged only in election years – that outnumbers both major parties in 19 counties.
West Virginia has just under 300,000 voters who are not registered members of any particular political party, and gaining their support means the difference between winning elections and delivering concession speeches. Independents are always the target. And as we gear up for yet another election year in 2026, your “no party preference” registration will surely earn you a mailbox full of high-gloss political postcards.
However, one politician who doesn’t appear to be trying to gain favor with independents, or even more moderate members of the GOP, is West Virginia’s Republican Governor Patrick Morrisey. Like Trump, Morrisey has been in office now for just about six months. And also like Trump, our chief executive has done his level best to create law through executive order. He has challenged the state’s legislature on everything from the budget surplus, to public school vaccine requirements, to transgender children participating in school sports.
Morrisey – the once-moderate Brooklyn-born former press secretary to New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman – has now hitched his wagon firmly to the starboard wing of the Republican party. For confirmation of Morrisey’s position on the political spectrum, one need only refer back to his cancellation of the Juneteenth holiday. Our 37th governor told us that we didn’t have the money to celebrate perhaps the most significant day of growth in our nation’s storied history, and that we were too poor to give our state workers a day off in recognition of the federal holiday.
Less than two weeks later, Morrisey made an unexpected – and difficult to understand – announcement regarding the July 4th holiday: July 3 – also being referred to as “Julird” – would now be considered a state holiday, and all state workers would receive a paid day off. It’s unclear if Morrisey did this due to the negative feedback he received regarding his Juneteenth cancellation, if he found a wad of cash hidden beneath his mattress in the Governor’s Mansion, or if he forgot to change his calendar from last year. Whatever his reasoning, Morrisey’s choices surrounding what many consider to be one of our nation’s two most important dates have only stirred the already boiling pot.
At the local level, community rallies and protests have become a fairly regular occurrence throughout West Virginia, and Independence Day will be no different. In Summersville, the Nicholas County Democratic Executive Committee will be holding another rally, just as they did last month for “No Kings Day.”
From the Nicholas County Democratic Headquarters Facebook page:
“Join fellow Democrats at the Silo, for a 4th of July Freedom Rally. July 4th, from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. We must come together for freedom! Silo Road on Rt.41, Summersville!”
But Summersville is not alone in hosting a 4th of July Freedom Rally, as Democrats all across West Virginia are hosting similar events. And while the blue team is choosing Friday to “come together for freedom,” the red team has a different day in mind.
From a press release from the Greenbrier County Republican Executive Committee, written by Communications Director Alex Kagan:
“On Saturday, July 5, from noon to 2 p.m., the Greenbrier County GOP will host patriotic West Virginians in a rally for America: a celebration of the United States and the immense success of the Trump administration.”
The GOP’s rally will take place at the Green Space downtown Lewisburg – on the corner of Washington and Jefferson Streets.
“‘No Kings’ agitators have decided to use July 4th not to celebrate our great country, but to sow division and hate, disrespect the flag, and openly call for the killing of our president,” Kagan goes on to say. “The Greenbrier GOP joins with other patriotic Americans in saying that enough is enough, and this hate must be overwhelmed through sheer love of our country.”
As it stands, West Virginia’s “Agitating” Democratic Party will celebrate Independence day with a series of “Freedom Rallies” throughout the state, with the Republicans countering these celebrations by holding a “Rally for America” on Saturday. I imagine this all makes perfect sense to someone, but to me the Democrat and Republican parties seem very much like two elementary school dodgeball teams arguing about whose foot was over the line when they threw the ball. “I’m more patriotic than you because I’m a conservative” versus “I love freedom more than you because I’m a liberal.” It’s like a heavyweight title fight between the lesser of who cares.
Oh, and I didn’t even mention West Virginia’s U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito voting in favor of Trump’s beyond-controversial “Big Beautiful Bill” about an hour after the president nominated her son to be our U.S. Attorney. I’m sure that was just one of those funny coincidences.
Anyway, it’s now 2:14 a.m. and I’ve blown by 272 by about 1,000 words. But if you’ll indulge me, I’ll leave you now with 272 more…
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
– President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863
