Gov. Justice Warns That the Public Distrusts Billionaires, Speaking as Both Expert Witness and Exhibit A

CHARLESTON — Gov. Justice, whose personal fortune is denominated in billions, sat for a lengthy public-radio interview this week to make the case for a third term and to observe, gravely, that the public has grown deeply distrustful of billionaires — a diagnosis delivered with the calm of a physician who has not yet consulted the mirror.

The governor's critique, to be fair to its author, was aimed at other billionaires: the meddling kind, the kind that buys platforms and elections. The governor's own billions, listeners were given to understand, are the quiet, homegrown, load-bearing kind that mostly funds the correct campaigns, including — the ledger notes — the governor's.

The Press's taxonomy desk confirms that American politics currently recognizes exactly two species of billionaire: the other party's, an oligarch strangling democracy; and one's own, a successful job creator who selflessly steps into the arena. Specimens migrate between species without any change to net worth, purely by changing whose rallies they fund.

A third term would make the governor the state's first since the era of ashtrays in hospitals, an ambition supporters call proven leadership and opponents call the exact seat-hoarding this party claims to deplore in the other one. Both descriptions, The Press confirms, are in the party warehouses, swap-ready.

Asked whether a billionaire seeking a third term while warning about billionaire influence contained any internal tension, the governor's office replied that the governor's record speaks for itself — which, given the subject, may have been the interview's single most rigorously audited claim.

The public's distrust of billionaires, polling confirms, remains robust, bipartisan, and — in the governor's home precincts — suspended every fourth November.