An English bulldog named Babydog makes a surprise appearance in a mural on West Virginia history
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The English bulldog had never been prominent in West Virginia history. It is now.
Gov. Jim Justice’s 4-year-old baby dog joined the ranks of Abraham Lincoln, Civil War soldiers and odes to Appalachian folk music in new murals beneath the state Capitol’s golden dome last week, along with other cultural symbols of the state. The dog, ensconced in a mural about artistic traditions, sits peacefully between a banjo player and an artist painting the Seneca Rocks, one of the state’s most famous natural landmarks in West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest.
Babydog made another memorable appearance at the Capitol in 2022, when the governor lifted her up during his State of the State address and pointed her butt toward the camera. A few days earlier, singer and actress Bette Midler, on what was then called Twitter, had called West Virginians “poor, illiterate and exhausted” after U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., refused to support a bill pushed by President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress was promoted.
“Babydog says to Bette Midler and everyone out there, kiss her ass,” Justice said to a standing ovation from the audience, which also included Supreme Court justices and members of the Legislature.
Justice, a Republican now running to succeed Manchin, 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. Justice affectionately calls her a “60-pound brown watermelon” and has since taken the dog on gubernatorial trips around the state. He praises Babydog’s ability to bring joy to people and sings about her love for Wendy’s chicken nuggets. More often than not, the dog sits panting next to him in her signature chair.
So far, Justice has been innocent about Babydog’s appearance in the murals, which were commissioned as part of an effort to wrap up work on the Capitol that began and stopped during the Great Depression.
“I was as surprised in my own way as anybody,” he said at a news briefing Wednesday. “Truly, I was not a party to putting Babydog on the mural.”
Justice said a committee led by Randall Reid-Smith, secretary of the Department of Arts, Culture and History, made the decision.
“They wanted to put a dog in there and they had to pick a type of dog, you know, so they picked an English bulldog,” the governor said. “A long, long, long time ago and all before we ever really became a country, the English were in charge, and everything seemed kind of appropriate, you know?”
Justice told reporters that Reid-Smith told him the dog in the mural wasn’t necessarily Babydog, but her “20th grandma.”
The billionaire, owner of the posh Greenbrier Resort and more than 100 other businesses, was first elected governor as a Democrat in 2016. The following year, during a rally with then-President Donald Trump, Justice announced that he would switch parties.
In May, Justice easily defeated U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney in the Republican primary for the Senate. Justice’s campaign included selling merchandise featuring his dog’s face, such as “Paw-litical Strategist” drink coolers and “Re-Pup-Lican for Justice.”
His Democratic opponent in November, Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott, doesn’t think Babydog is that funny. Elliott said he saw Justice later the day the mural was unveiled at another art event celebrating a new statue of the state’s first governor, Arthur Boreman, in Wheeling.
“In his remarks, he spoke at length about his own dog and said nothing about Governor Boreman,” Elliott wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “This complete disrespect for anything beyond himself is the reason he is wholly unfit to represent West Virginia in the United States Senate.”
When asked about Elliott’s criticism, Justice said, “Tell Glenn to get a life.”
West Virginia’s limestone state capitol was designed by famed Cass Gilbert, the architect behind the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington. Gilbert’s original design for the interior of the West Virginia Capitol, which remained unfinished due to limited funding, included murals that he intended to be “historical and allegorical.”
The artwork “Shiveree of Seneca Rock” with Babydog features Seneca Rocks, a majestic 900-foot Tuscarora quartzite formation, along with important aspects of West Virginia industry and culture, including glassblowing, crafts, music, dance, painting and wildlife.
The small image of the dog was not included in the initial designs shared with the public, nor was it mentioned at the dedication. Babydog was present at the event on June 20, where she sat on a camp chair after being hoisted up by Justice staff.
Only then did people start noticing the bulldog in photos of the murals shared on social media. And there wasn’t much debate about whose dog it was.
Reid-Smith said at a news conference last week that he had worked for years to get a governor to invest in completing Gilbert’s vision and that Justice was the one who finally made it happen. So far, nearly $350,000 in state money has been paid to Connecticut installer John Canning & Co. for the first four murals, and four more will be installed this fall.
“Jim Justice’s only involvement in these murals is that he gave us the money to pay for these murals that hadn’t been painted in 92 years,” Reid-Smith said Wednesday.
Babydog’s ancestor wasn’t the only addition to the painting after the artists’ designs were shared with the public.
The murals originally featured no African Americans, and Reid-Smith and the rest of the mural committee, mostly Justice Department staffers, decided that this needed to be remedied. They added an image of a black man talking to a Union soldier and modified the original renderings to better feature the Harper’s Ferry Armory, where abolitionist John Brown took refuge during his 1859 raid on the city after inciting an anti-slavery uprising.
According to Reid-Smith, a moose, a cardinal and other animals have also been added to the murals.