The 2020 general election may be over a year away, but the Democratic primaries have officially begun. The first candidate to announce a bid for the White House is Richard Ojeda, a state Senator from West Virginia. With very little name recognition, it is very likely that most of you have never even heard his name.

Ojeda is 48 years old and was born in Rochester, Minnesota. His paternal grandfather was born in Mexico, and his father lived there until the age of 8. After high school Ojeda joined the Army where he served for 24 years, reaching the rank of Major. While in the military he graduated from West Virginia State University and Webster University, earning his Masters Degree in Business Administration. After retiring from the Army, he worked as a high school teacher before successfully running for West Virginia State Senate in 2016.

Ojeda first came on the national scene in progressive circles when he ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 election cycle. He also gained notoriety for being very vocal in his support for the 2018 West Virginia teachers strike. Unfortunately, he did not win his bid for Congress but most notably he improved the Democratic results by 32 points, only losing to his Republican opponent by 12 points. For a Democrat in West Virginia this is pretty impressive given the fact that the previous Democrat only won 24% of the vote, with Ojeda taking 44% of the vote.

Ojeda has called himself a moderate Democrat, but many have said that his views are more in line with a left-wing populist platform. In the West Virginia State Senate, he has made increasing teacher pay a key part of his agenda, criticizing the states moderate pay increase. He also sponsored the Medical Marijuana Act, which was signed into law in 2017.

In November of 2018 he announced that he would be running for president on the Democratic ticket. A large part of his campaign is an anti-corruption and anti-lobbying platform, pledging not to take any corporate PAC money. In his 2018 House run, he only accepted small donations from individual donors and labor unions. He has endorsed Medicare for All and full legalization of marijuana.

While Ojeda may have some economic planks in his platform that will appeal to progressives, there is one notable obstacle that Democrats may not be able get past – in 2016 he cast his vote for Donald Trump for president. He stated that he thought Trump would be good for West Virginians, but has since said that he regrets that decision. Ojeda tried to justify his vote by saying that on the campaign trail Trump talked a good game about the little man and helping working class people, but since becoming president, he has become a twitter using, divisive con-man, that has empowered the very characters he claimed to reign in.

In what is going to be a very crowded primary season, with candidates battling over who is the most progressive choice, does a Trump voting Democrat stand a chance? Ojeda lacks national name recognition and is relatively new on the political scene. Just last primary season, Bernie Sanders, who also had low name recognition, almost successfully took down one of the most well-known and powerful Democrats, Hillary Clinton. Ojeda is hoping for the same underdog success this time around. A key difference is the fact that while Sanders was not very well-known nationally, he was a sitting U.S. Senator and had been involved in politics for almost 40 years. The West Virginian is also personally pro-life but has said that he believes access to abortion should be legal. In a time when reproductive rights are under assault and the very existence of Roe v. Wade is in question this may also make some Democrats hesitant about supporting the candidate.

The Democratic primaries have kicked off and are sure to be fiercely fought by all of the candidates. Richard Ojeda is arguably the biggest longshot of the race but if 2016 proved anything, it’s that all political norms have been tossed aside and anything can happen, and at least Ojeda is more qualified than the current occupant of the Oval Office. That being said, I don’t see Ojeda being a frontrunner in any way, except in helping to push the party in a more economically populist direction focused on the working class.

Dale Seufert-Navarro