Bernie Sanders brings 'Fighting Oligarchy Tour' to Trump strongholds across deep-red West Virginia

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., drew large crowds over the weekend for his "Fighting Oligarchy Tour" in a state that would seem otherwise loath to listen to his democratic socialist message.

Sanders spoke to a standing-room-only crowd at a theater in Wheeling – a city sandwiched between Ohio and Pennsylvania in the Northern Panhandle – and held two other events in the capital, Charleston, and in Lenore, a coal town of 1,300 just across the Tug Fork River from Kentucky.

Sanders said Republicans didn’t win West Virginia in 2024 – the second-reddest state behind Wyoming – but that Democrats "lost it."

Republicans, however, dismissed the left-wing firebrand’s rallies. They said the real evidence of political momentum in the Mountain State is in the numbers the GOP continues to attract in a place where "bluedog" Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin and Rep. Nick Joe Rahall dominated politics only a decade ago.

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On social media, Sanders celebrated his Lenore rally as a "great turnout" in a place "where Trump won 74% of the vote."

"The working class here knows that it’s absurd to slash Medicaid & SNAP to give tax breaks to billionaires. Trump didn’t win West Virginia, Dems lost it. Working people want a real alternative."

In Wheeling, where behemoth industrial facilities line the Ohio River southward toward Huntington, Sanders said he came to "beg" for public political activism.

West Virginia Republican Party Chairman Josh Holstein told Fox News Digital in a Monday interview that if voters compared Sanders’ Wheeling rally to his campaign event a decade ago in Huntington, they’d notice that many more came to hear him for the first time than this past weekend.

"Our party has surpassed 500,000 registered Republicans in West Virginia for the first time ever. And it's a complete reversal from just nine years ago when the Democrats had an almost 200,000 registered voter advantage," Holstein said.

"It's just a remarkable turnaround, it really goes to show – where are the hearts and minds of the people of West Virginia? They're with us, they are not with the Democrats."

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Holstein said the progressive movement was at its height when Sanders was its de facto leader when he ran for president, and that his rallies were also a silent indictment of today's Democratic Party.

"I do find it a little hilarious that the only person that can really draw the crowd in West Virginia – or anywhere at this point – for the Democratic base is somebody that's not a Democrat," Holstein quipped.

Rep. Riley Moore, a Republican from the Eastern Panhandle – the one part of the state Sanders did not visit – offered his own irony.

"A millionaire socialist flying on a private jet to lecture working-class West Virginians about ‘oligarchy’ is laughable," said Moore.

"But there’s nothing funny about the job and community-destroying green energy policies that Bernie Sanders pushes on behalf of the real [at] ESG-pushing [investment] institutions."

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State Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, chairman of the West Virginia Democratic Party, credited Sanders as the first of any federal lawmaker to hold a town hall in the state.

"Sen. Sanders came to West Virginia and did something our Republican congressional delegation refuses to do – hold open town hall meetings and take questions directly from the people they represent," Pushkin said.

"Everywhere he went, the crowds were standing-room-only, and they greeted him with real enthusiasm. West Virginians responded to his message loud and clear – they want to get dark money out of politics, protect Social Security and Medicare, and create real economic opportunity for everyone."