{"id":3288,"date":"2018-03-06T11:29:47","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T16:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3288"},"modified":"2018-03-06T20:56:33","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T01:56:33","slug":"high-school-teacher-jason-armentrout-to-run-for-state-senate-as-independent-against-charles-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3288","title":{"rendered":"High School Teacher Jason Armentrout to Run for State Senate as Independent Against Charles Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frankfort High School social studies teacher and wrestling coach Jason Armentrout will run as an independent against State Senator Charles Trump (R-Morgan) in November. There is no Democrat in the race.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Jason Armentrout and family<\/p><\/div>\n

Armentrout has been a teacher at Frankfort High School in Short Gap, West Virginia for fourteen years. <\/span><\/p>\n

Armentrout says he\u2019s fed up with the dysfunction in Charleston.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the legislature\u2019s response to the teachers’ strike was the last straw.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest problem I\u2019ve always had with the Republican Party \u2013they have been so anti-teacher for a long time,\u201d Armentrout said. \u201cI grew up in a conservative evangelical household. I grew up to respect my elders, including my teachers. A lot of these conservatives today don\u2019t respect teachers. Now they have taken it to a new level, to push private school vouchers, to pressure public education. The Republicans are so nasty. And Charlie Trump is enslaved to that platform.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Even though Armentrout has been a conservative Republican most of his life \u2013 he\u2019s now registered as no party \u2013 his politics are more in line with State Senator Richard Ojeda (D-Logan) than with Charlie Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would hear the needs of teachers,\u201d Armentrout said. \u201cI agree with Senator Ojeda. We need to increase the severance on natural gas. How is so much of the land in West Virginia absentee owned, out of state owned? That\u2019s a big issue. It\u2019s been a big issue for generations. We have watched out of state interests \u2013 timber and coal \u2013 pillage our state. The companies that made off like bandits are headquartered in New York and New Jersey. We got nothing out of that. The severances were minimal. It\u2019s just like Senator Ojeda said \u2013 if two or three companies don\u2019t want to play by our rules, there are others that will.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCharlie Trump and I have some pretty obvious differences.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t a good Republican. If I had been a Democrat, I wouldn\u2019t be a good Democrat either. I don\u2019t like feeling like a slave to either party. You have to weigh the big party donors. If you piss off the big party donors, then you take the blame.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if I could really run as a Republican or a Democrat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Armentrout needs 270 signatures from voters in the 15th Senatorial district to get on the ballot as an independent. Signatures are due August 1. <\/span><\/p>\n

The district includes all of Morgan and Hampshire Counties and parts of Berkeley and\u00a0 Mineral counties.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frankfort High School social studies teacher and wrestling coach Jason Armentrout will run as an independent against State Senator Charles Trump (R-Morgan) in November. There is no Democrat in the race. Armentrout has been a teacher at Frankfort High School … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3288"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3296,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3288\/revisions\/3296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}