West Virginian Vince George is running in the First Congressional District against Congresswoman Carol Miller.
We knew Vince George from years ago when he was living and working in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. We worked together on third party and independent political campaigns, challenging the corrupt corporate duopoly. He then moved away to Florida, where he was working for the state, then he retired a couple of years ago and moved back to his hometown – Charleston, West Virginia – where he grew up.
Now he’s decided to run as a Democrat against Republican Congresswoman Carol Miller in the First Congressional District of West Virginia – comprised of the 28 counties in the southern part of the state – including coal country.
“Everywhere I go, people say to me – Carol Miller is awful, she doesn’t care about us, she betrayed us,” George told the Capitol Hill Citizen in an interview published in the November/December 2025 issue. “And I’ve got friends and family throughout the district and they tell me the same thing. And it’s not just Medicaid and the subsidies to the Affordable Care Act. She also cut $100 billion out of Medicare. They cut billions in food assistance and housing assistance. The unions are disgusted because they cut subsidies on wind and solar, two industries that were growing rapidly here and creating good paying union jobs.”
“Carol Miller doesn’t show up for town hall meetings,” George told the Citizen. “She doesn’t answer her phone. She doesn’t even send her constituents the obligatory thank you letters. She’s not responsive. It’s a joke. She didn’t do anything to advocate for the people back home here in West Virginia. If you are not going to do your job, then let someone else do it.”
“She’s been in office for six years now and I’ve heard repeatedly that she hasn’t even been to all of the 28 counties in her district. I mean, that’s just inexcusable. I can’t tell you how many people who never met me before in my life and I will introduce myself to them, tell them I’m running for Congress from this district, and when I mention Carol Miller, they immediately roll their eyes and start talking about her. I don’t say anything negative other than mention her name. They’re like – oh yeah, we’ve got to get rid of her. She’s just no account.”
“Why would you reward somebody like Carol Miller with another term, another election win, someone who stole from you and your family and your children, who caused your family to go hungry, caused your family to go without health care, caused your family to have your heat turned off in the wintertime?”
We asked George – Don’t you think that the Democratic party’s reputation as a corrupt national party is going to drag you down in West Virginia? Why don’t you run as an independent?
“Wes Holden ran for Congress in this district last year as an independent,” George said. “He was endorsed by former U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller. He worked for Rockefeller during his career. He’s really well spoken, good on the issues. But he only got seven percent of the vote. I have worked on independent and third-party campaigns, so I know what it takes. I have no illusions about the difficulty of getting support from the national Democratic Party. But by all indications, the people are disappointed by Carol Miller. Is that going to be enough? I’m going to find out. And I’m not backing out. I’ve got the time, I’ve got the interest, the knowledge, the experience and I’m not happy. I wasn’t looking to run in this race. But I couldn’t just sit here like a bump on a log and not do anything. I had to try to help overthrow this person who is the enemy of the people. If you wanted to define a candidate you would want to run against, the picture in the dictionary would be Carol Miller.”
In the same issue of the Citizen newspaper, Bad Faith ran an interview with podcast host and Democratic Party critic Briahna Joy Gray and asked Gray about the Vince George race.
“Do I think that running as on the Democratic ticket is a strategy that independent candidates should embrace? Yes, I would agree that’s a good strategy because of the structural impediments that third parties confront,” Gray told the Citizen. “That’s what Bernie did. And that’s what in some ways RFK Jr. did running as a Democrat before becoming an independent. Getting on the debate stage is so crucial to getting national attention and it’s something you can only get if you are with a major party. It makes a lot of sense. One of Zohran Mamdani’s major breakout moments was during his debate with Andrew Cuomo where he said that Cuomo had mispronounced his name and also had that viral moment where he articulated that he would not be going to Israel because he wanted to be the Mayor of New York and represent all its people. I’m not saying he would not have won the primary without those viral moments in the debates, but that certainly was a big part of it. So no I don’t have an issue with that strategy. I would have an issue if the person goes to Congress and then bends the knee to the Democratic Party establishment.”
(To get a copy of the print edition of the Capitol Hill Citizen, go to capitolhillcitizen.com)
