WILLIAMSON, W.Va. -- How did an unemployed coal worker who identifies as a Republican break through the usually manicured world of presidential campaign round tables?
It was a classic case of connections made in a life in a small town, Bo Copley told reporters after he became the unanticipated star here Monday.
"We coach three soccer teams, and Dr. Beckett's son and his daughter played soccer for me, and so we've gotten fairly close," Copley said, tearing up as he spoke. "They approached me Saturday and said they thought of me they were looking for an out-of-work coal miner because being close to us and seeing us, they knew our situation."
Dr. Dino Beckett is the chief executive officer at the health and wellness center, and he played host for the event where Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III held a small gathering in Mingo County, which is being devastated by the collapse of the coal economy.
"They knew I try to conduct myself in a manner Christian-like, and try to be civil," Copley said.
Round table discussions on the campaign trail often come off as highly orchestrated affairs, especially in the week before the state's May 10 primary. But that wasn't the case Monday when Copley, a 39-year old father who had lost his job in the Mountaineer State's energy business got to speak, as he put it, for the throng of angry people waving signs and shouting outside.
Copley confronted Clinton directly over the comments the former secretary of state made during a CNN town hall back in March that, "We're gonna put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."
"I just want to know," Copley said, "how you can say you're going to put a lot of coal miners out of, out of jobs, and then come in here and tell us how you're going to be our friend, because those people out there don't see you as a friend."
Copley said his family has a small business that's allowing them to get by, but not in the same way that they did when he was a maintenance planner for an energy conglomerate.
"Those are the three faces that I had to come home to and explain that I didn't have a job," Copley said.
Clinton told him her comments had been taken out of context. And indeed a tape from the March town hall shows her talking extensively about the needs of displaced coal workers.
But it is that single line that the angry crowd outside the medical center and Republicans have seized on. Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul's has made it a focus of his re-election bid this fall, given that his state has lost about 1,500 coal industry jobs in the past three months.
In a statement released before her visits to Kentucky and West Virginia on Monday he referred to the "real and devastating effects of the Obama-Clinton War on Coal."
At the round table, in a corner of West Virginia that borders Kentucky, Clinton laid out her proposals to revitalize Appalachia's coal communities through job training, education and small business investment.
"I put forth a $30 billion plan," Clinton told Copley. "We can't just leave people like you and your family behind. That's not how I'm made, and it's not what I'll do. And so I made one misstatement, you know, and I apologized for that. It was not meant to be taken the way that it was taken."
She acknowledged that the remark would hurt her chances for winning votes in Appalachia, but she hoped it wouldn't affect Sen. Manchin, who has endorsed her.
Manchin, for his part, said he has decided he can trust Clinton, knowing full well it might cost him down the road.
"If I thought that was in her heart, if I thought she wanted to eliminate one job in West Virginia, I wouldn't be sitting here," the senator said at the round table. "I think Hillary knows that. She wouldn't be here if felt that way. There's no way you could come into this type of a setting and meet the people who hurt so bad unless you want to help them."
Copley told Manchin bluntly, "Supporting her hurts you."
"I believe we'll have a friend, I really do," Manchin responded. "And if my political life is on the line, so be it."
Manchin, a former governor, is not on the ballot again until 2018, but his seat could prove crucial in deciding who controls the Senate during the second half of the next president's term.
If the crowd outside is any indication, with perhaps hundreds joining amid torrential rains on the streets of a small coal town, Manchin just might have a political problem.
David Jarrell, a college student from Mingo County wearing only a Boston Celtics T-shirt, was drenched by the end of the event waving a Donald Trump for president sign.
"I used to like Joe when he was governor," Jarrell said. "Yeah, I loved him as governor. But when he got to the Senate he let that stuff get to his head, and so now I ain't gonna vote for him."
Manchin served six years as the chief executive in West Virginia before being elected to the Senate to fill the unexpired term created by the death of the legendary Robert C. Byrd. The four-lane highway that connects this town to the state capital of Charleston bears Byrd's name.
Manchin said he couldn't afford to worry about the politics.
"If I'm worried about that politically, I'm more worried about myself more politically than I am about my state," he said. "And I'm not going to do that."
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