Don Blankenship

Don Blankenship

Donald Leon Blankenship is an American business executive and politician. He was Chairman and CEO of the Massey Energy Company from 2000 until his retirement in 2010. In 2015, he was found guilty of one misdemeanor charge of conspiring to willfully violate mine safety and health standards in relation to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. In 2018, he ran for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia but lost the Republican primary to Patrick Morrisey. He ran for President of the United States in 2020 as a member of the Constitution Party.

About Don Blankenship in brief

Summary Don BlankenshipDonald Leon Blankenship is an American business executive and politician. He was Chairman and CEO of the Massey Energy Company from 2000 until his retirement in 2010. In 2018, he ran for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia but lost the Republican primary to Patrick Morrisey. He ran for President of the United States in 2020 as a member of the Constitution Party, alongside running mate Bill Mohr. In 2015, he was found guilty of one misdemeanor charge of conspiring to willfully violate mine safety and health standards in relation to the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion. He has frequently spoken out about politics, the environment, unions, and coal production. In a 1980s documentary, he said, \”It’s like a jungle, where a jungle is survival of the fittest. Unions, communities, people—everybody’s gonna have to learn to accept that in the United. States you have a capitalist society, and that capitalism, from a business standpoint, is survival. of the most productive.’ He has spoken out against media coverage of the coal industry, and his longtime criticisms of the general condition of the West Virginia politics in general. He is married to former Vice President Al Gore’s daughter, Nancy, and has a son, Donald, and a daughter-in-law, Lauren, with whom he has a daughter, Lauren Blankenships, and one son, Cody Blankenshenship. In 2011, he incorporated McCoy Coal Group, a coal company in Kentucky. McCoy has yet to seek a mining permit at the Tug Valley Mining Institute on November 20, 2012.

In 2002, he was inducted into the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Business and Industry Hall of Fame. In 2010, he announced that he was retiring as CEO at the end of the year and would be succeeded by Massey President Baxter F. Phillips Jr. He is the first non-Massey family member to be in charge of the company. He received a deferred compensation package valued at USD 27. 2 million in 2009, the highest in the coalindustry. It was a USD 6. 8 million raise over 2008, and almost double his compensation package in 2007. In 2012, he became the chairman of the Center for Energy and Economic Development, a director of the National Mining Association, Mission West Virginia Inc, and was on the U of S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors. In 2013, he founded a coal mining company with his wife, Nancy McCoy, in Delorme, West Virginia. His father served in the Korean War and his mother was a members of the McCoy family. His mother ran a convenience store and gas station for 40 years. He graduated from Matewan High School in Matewan, West West Virginia, in 1968, and earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Marshall University in 1972 in three school years, having worked as a coal miner during summertime. In 1996, Blankenscy was elected to the board of Directors of engineering and construction company Fluor Corporation.