West Virginia Lawmaker Richard Ojeda Announces 2020 Presidential Run

(Bloomberg) -- Richard Ojeda, a West Virginia Democrat who lost his bid for a U.S. House seat last week, announced he will seek his party’s nomination for president in 2020.

Ojeda announced his candidacy at the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C., saying that in his unsuccessful bid for West Virginia’s third congressional district, he “turned almost 35 percent of the people who voted for Donald Trump back to Democrats.” Ojeda, a state senator and former Army paratrooper, joins Maryland Democratic Representative John Delaney in being among the first to formally announce a presidential bid.

Ojeda supported Trump for president in 2016, though quickly reversed to become a strident critic of the president’s. He will start the campaign as a longshot in what will likely be a crowded field trying to unseat President Donald Trump.

To contact the reporter on this story: Korey Matthews in Washington at kmatthews36@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Derek Wallbank at dwallbank@bloomberg.net, John Hughes, Greg Sullivan

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