Gov. Jim Justice is West Virginia’s richest man and owns its most storied resort. When lobbyists and state agencies book there, he profits.

West Virginia has a long history of the rich exploiting the poor and extracting its natural resources. When Europeans colonized near the coast, Native Americans were displaced there. Later they were further displaced by the railroads and white settlers. Then rich people got a law passed to let them buy rights to the minerals under people's land and kicked them off to dig their mines - later, hiring them to work the mines. Around the mines, the companies would build an entire town (called a company town) with shops, schools, and churches all run by the company. The miners would be paid in company scrip, basically money they could only spend in the company town. If you were caught unionizing they'd kick you out of your house and you would be penniless.

There was a lot of labor unrest and unionizing - culminating in an episode in 1921 with the Battle of Blair Mountain. The US Army actually dropped bombs on the strikers, there was no Air Force yet. After that they basically broke the back of the union movement. They've been automating ever since, to the point where 100 men can do the work of 10,000. Basically the only people with good mine jobs are the most loyal and sycophantic because that's the only decent source of employment.

There are definitely dissenting voices but that's why so many people in West Virginia seem to vote so clearly against their own interest. These mining companies have been treating them like dogs for two hundred years, but to some people it's all they know or they benefit from the system.