THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

In the old days if you led the state militia unit that gunned down striking miners the answer would be yes and nowadays Bloody Don Blankenship, who killed 29 miners with his cost cutting and union busting is trying to see if it still works in West Virginia.

The devastating explosion in the Upper Big Branch coal mine killed 29 men in 2010 and scarred West Virginia like few events in modern memory. Don Blankenship, the head of the mining company, went to prison over it.

Not many people would call that a springboard for a career in politics.

Yet when Mr. Blankenship emerged last year from his one-year sentence for conspiracy to violate mine safety laws, rather than express remorse or contrition over the tragedy, he announced a run for the United States Senate, in a state where coal has been as much a cultural identity as an economic one.

His return to the public eye has reawakened painful memories in West Virginia, especially for relatives of the disaster’s victims. “You took 29 lives away from families like mine,” said Judy Jones Petersen in an interview, as if she were addressing Mr. Blankenship. Her brother, Dean Jones, was killed in the disaster. “Shame on you for coming back,” she said.

At one of Mr. Blankenship’s meet-and-greet events with voters, a knot of protesters held signs: “You must be joking.”

But in the coal fields, many people don’t think his candidacy is a joke at all. He has found support there for his claim to be a victim himself, pursued unfairly by federal prosecutors and mine safety inspectors. He brazenly calls himself a former “political prisoner.”

“They railroaded him,” said Steve Blair, a retiree who worked in mines run by Mr. Blankenship when he was the chief executive of the Massey Energy Company, once the largest coal producer in central Appalachia. “The federal government turned everybody loose to testify against him, just to get rid of him.”

Mr. Blair, 61, wearing a West Virginia University cap, forked up his steak and eggs at a Bob Evans restaurant recently in Logan. The town, once a Democratic stronghold, is emblematic of how vehemently voters in Appalachia have rejected the national party: Mr. Blair voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but four years later, the sitting president lost the Democratic primary in Logan County to a protest candidate in a Texas prison.

A burly man who is certain in his views, Mr. Blair had a ready explanation for the long decline of the coal industry. “One word: Obama,” he said. “I was put out of business by Obama.”

Mr. Blankenship claims that the federal government, not the coal company, is to blame for the explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine near Montcoal, W.Va. Investigators found no evidence to support his claims, but he is running for office in an era of nationwide voter credulity for conspiracy theories.

And his candidacy is unfolding in a state where many people embrace a sense of persecution over coal’s decline. Economists say that a host of factors are responsible, chiefly the abundance of cheap natural gas, which has undercut coal in the energy marketplace. But that is not what many West Virginians choose to hear.

One word, Obama, so much easier to say and understand than a mine owner using them to suck all the value out of their work and calling a fatal mine disater just the cost of business. So sad because their grandparents would have known where the real danger lies.