CHARLESTON (AP) – The English bulldog had never been featured prominently in West Virginia history. It has now.
Governor Jim Justice’s four-year-old pure breed Babydog joined the ranks of Abraham Lincoln, Civil War soldiers and odes to Appalachian folk music in new murals under the golden dome of the state Capitol recently, alongside other state cultural symbols.
Tucked into a mural about artistic traditions, the dog sits placidly between a banjo player and an artist painting the Seneca Rocks, one of the state’s best-known natural landmarks, in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest.
Babydog made another memorable appearance at the Capitol in 2022, when the governor hoisted her up during his State of the State address and pointed her rear end at the camera.
Days earlier, singer and actress Bette Midler, on what was then Twitter, had called West Virginians “poor, illiterate and strung out” after United States Senator Joe Manchin, D-W.Va, refused to support a bill promoted by President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress.
“Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there: Kiss her heinie,” Justice said to a standing ovation from the crowd, which included state Supreme Court justices and members of the Legislature.
Justice, a Republican now running to succeed Manchin, has made Babydog a minor celebrity in West Virginia during his two terms as governor.
The star of the governor’s “Do it for Babydog” COVID-19 vaccination campaign, the dog was a gift from Justice’s children in 2019. Referring to her lovingly as a “60-pound brown watermelon”, Justice has taken the dog on gubernatorial trips across the state ever since.
He extols Babydog’s ability to bring people joy and he raves about her fondness for Wendy’s chicken nuggets. The dog, more often than not, sits panting quietly beside him in her signature chair.
So far, Justice has been playing innocent about Babydog’s appearance in the murals, which were commissioned as part of an effort to finish work inside the Capitol that started and then stopped during the Great Depression.
“I was just as surprised, in my ways, as anyone,” he said during a news briefing. “Really and truly, I wasn’t a party to… putting Babydog in the mural.”
