New York Post, Sunday, October 25, 2020
nypost.com
S
YCAMORE,
Pa. — The
one thing all
the guys
know about
Sara Vance is
she never
cries.
Which is why her co-
workers — all men —
dropped their tools when
Vance suddenly broke
down in a flood of tears
after she failed to shovel coal into a
conveyor belt.
Pregnant with her first child and
just weeks before the due date, she
was 1,200 feet below the surface of
the earth with no easy way out.
“I wasn’t in pain or going into la-
bor,” Vance said. “I was just so frus-
trated because my belly was getting
in my way of shoveling. I take pride
in being able to do my job and those
tears just started falling the more ex-
asperated I became.”
Within minutes a dozen men were
at her side. Vance was placed in the
mantrip and driven through the
seven miles of underground maze at
Harvey Mine to an elevator where
a stretcher waited to take her to the
surface.
“I told them I do not need a
stretcher and I certainly do not need
an ambulance because I was not
having a baby at that moment. I was
just mad I couldn’t do my job,” Vance
said, laughing at the memory.
Vance, who is 33 and blessed with
thick, curly red hair, striking brown
eyes and a rich Appalachian drawl,
is standing in the cavernous locker
room of the Harvey Mine in Greene
County, Pa. It is eleven months since
she had her daughter, Alexis, and she
is about to descend once again for
her daily shift.
The daughter of one of the first fe-
male coal miners in the country,
Vance is dressed head-to-foot in full
protective gear including overalls,
hard hat, steel-toed boots, mining
light, portable oxygen — and a red,
white and blue mask emblazoned
with the words “Trump 2020.”
In 2016, presidential candidate Do-
nald J. Trump told coal miners in
western Pennsylvania he was going
to bring their jobs back — along with
the engineers, chemists and geologists
who work alongside them. In return,
Trump won big around the coal-pro-
ducing parts of Appalachian Pennsyl-
vania. His oversized turnout in the
coal counties of Washington, Greene,Cambria, Somerset, West-
moreland, Luzerne and
Fayette helped earn him
that 41,000-vote edge over
Hillary Clinton in Pennsyl-
vania, who famously told a
town-hall audience during
her campaign, “We’re going
to put a lot of coal miners
and coal companies out of
business.”
Four years later, I met
with dozens of miners to
see if their feelings for Trump have
changed. All the workers I spoke to
not only still support Trump for ree-
lection, they firmly believe he has
done right by their industry.
Those who live outside the hollers
point to statistics that show more
coal jobs have been lost since Trump
took office. And it’s true: According
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
there were close to 90,000 coal-
mining jobs in 2012, compared with
46,600 today. In the last five years,
483 coal-fired electric generating
units in the US have closed or an-
nounced their retirement.
But those who work in the indus-
try said they aren’t blind to the data.
Rather, they said that Trump’s shift
away from Obama’s policies was the
first step toward reversing the trend.
“We in the industry knew when he
said he was bringing it back that it
wasn’t going to happen overnight,
nor was it going to ever look like it
once did at its peak,” said Vance, the
only female miner at the facility that
employs 300 total underground.
In 2008, when candidate Barack
Obama ran for president, his mantra
of “Hope and Change” was not seen
as a threat to the livelihoods of
working-class voters. Obama won
Pennsylvania by a whopping 10.3
percentage points, with healthy vic-
tories in Luzerne and Cambria coun-
ties and a close loss here in GreeneSalena
zITOPA.
PittsburghMorgantownClevelandOHIOW.VA.Harvey Mine
County.
But in 2015, Presi-
dent Obama un-
veiled the Clean
Power Plan, which
aimed to reduce US
power sector emis-
sions 32 percent be-
low 2005 levels by
2030 and switch the
country’s electrical
grid away from
coal-fired power
plant dependence.
Suddenly, coal min-
ers felt the Demo-
crat Party had
abandoned not just
their jobs but also
their communities,
deeply rooted in
coal country for
generations.
When he an-
nounced his Clean
Power Plan, Obama
snapped at Republi-
cans, saying “they’ll
claim this plan is a
‘war on coal’ to
scare up votes” yet
he only vaguely of-
fered “support for
retirement” and ab-
stract, unnamed
“better paying jobs”
to replace the ones
that would be elim-
inated.
“Those [Obama]
rules picked winners
and losers in the en-
ergy sector and we
were on the losing end,” said Vance.
In 2016, many of those same “losers”
in the energy sector helped put Trump
in the White House.D
RIVe from the city of Pitts-
burgh, past its tidy tree-lined
suburban neighborhoods, and
the landscape soon becomes
rolling hills, deep forests, sparkling
creeks and bucolic farm scenes
where many mines including the
Harvey are located.
Coal has two very important pur-
poses: to create electricity and make
steel. Currently, thermal coal is used
to generate 21.7 percent of the elec-
tricity in the US, while metallurgical
coal is used to make 70 percent of the
world’s steel. The Harvey Mine pro-
duces thermal coal, but both types
are found in Western Pennsylvania.
With its office building sitting atopPOSTSCRIPT Politics
THEY STILL DIG
In 2016, Pennsylvania miners helped put Trump into
the White House. Four years later, they have no regrets
Todd McNair (top
inset),
superintendent of
the Harvey Mine,
wonders why Joe
Biden never
helped miners
through 50 years
in government.
Eric Schubel
(inset above),
vice president of
operations for
CONSOL Energy,
says Trump has
tried to stem the
industry’s
collapse.