MORGANTOWN, W.Va. -- Natalie Tennant drifted to the left-front row of the West Virginia University lecture hall and locked eyes with a student's Galaxy watch.

"I'll tell you why I always wanted one of these," Tennant, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, told the political science students. "I was in the third grade when I read in Scholastic News that someday we'll have a television on our wrist."

Economic growth stemming from the manufacturing of cutting-edge technology isn't out of reach for West Virginia, she said, pausing for a reaction. "We'll take these ideas, like what's on his wrist, from the labs and factories to consumers."

Tennant, 46, is the youngest sibling in a large, rumble-tumble West Virginia farm family, and is among the only ones who didn't pursue teaching as a career. In the crowded room full of students carrying the latest iPhones and laptops, she doled out optimism and promised to address this generation's angst about debt and jobs. She pulled at political threads meant to energize a small but progressive voting bloc that tends to swing Democratic, and leaned hard on broad themes around economic development and equal opportunity.

"Anybody know about 3-D printing?" she asked. "Robert C. Byrd Institute. We helped to lead the way when it comes to that. We have ideas abound here. Has anybody been to the Launch Lab?"

With some prodding, students appeared to warm up to Tennant during the campaign stop earlier this month. She recounted her days as a student, when in 1990, she became the first woman selected to be the Mountaineer, WVU's Daniel Boone-esque mascot. Tennant peppered her campaign stops that day with references to natural gas, solar power and the high-tech centers on campus, including the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory.

"When are you going to get registered to vote?" she asked, needling the freshman with the Galaxy watch and pulling a laugh out of the class. "Today," he assured her in a low tone.

"You were going to let it slide? For real?!" she pressed. "Where's your mother?"

Everyone laughed. Yet outside the classroom, the infectious energy Tennant brings to the race for Senate is mired in the politics of coal, where state Republicans characterize the presidency of Barack Obama as singularly responsible for Appalachia's declining coal fields. Tennant's critics pin her to Obama administration environmental policies they say lay waste to the state's coal business.

It's in this arena where Tennant faces an almost impossible uphill climb toward the Nov. 4 election. Ideas about expanding economic growth outside the coal business are overwhelmed by the deluge of debate about which candidate supports coal miners the most. The state has bled jobs in its southern coal-producing counties.

Outside of this college town, West Virginia has the second-oldest population among all 50 states. Forty-one counties across the state experienced a decline in population in 2013, according to the WVU College of Business and Economics, and personal income remains at about 80 percent of the national average.

Talking about people's kids

Polls put Tennant far behind her Republican rival, Shelley Moore Capito, a member of the U.S. House representing the capital city, Charleston, since 2001. Capito's father is Arch Moore, a former West Virginia governor who pleaded guilty in 1990 to federal obstruction of justice and corruption charges tied to coal industry money.

Tennant has yet to get within 10 percentage points of Capito, according to recent polls. Her in-state fundraising is strong, but the two-term secretary of state has struggled to attract more attention from the national Democratic Party and high-profile fundraisers. National pollsters place Capito's chances of winning at more than 90 percent.

"West Virginia hates Obama," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political newsletter out of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics. "And even though it's historically Democratic, they look likely to send a Republican to the Senate for the first time in half a century."

Gun rights, health care, Obama and economic malaise color the race. Last month, the National Rifle Association pumped cash into radio spots warning voters that Tennant and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are conspiring to take away their guns.

But coal remains the dominant theme north and south, and part of the story is how West Virginia's political culture grapples with coal's quickening decline as an economic base in poor and remote counties. That's where Tennant's quixotic attempt to win a Senate seat is notable, as she weaves lingo about 3-D printing with the familiar language of a coal-state Democrat. She acknowledges that any departure from a coal-only message can lead to accusations that she's "anti-coal."

"You have to look at it with an open mind," she said. "What's going to happen later on? We're really talking about people's kids here."

Coal producers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania have seen a century of boom-and-bust cycles. But energy analysts have warned that this bust isn't just another turn in the commodity market. It's a permanent "structural decline," they say, with more erosion of jobs on the horizon.

"When you start talking about workers losing their jobs and retraining, it means you've already given up the fight," said Mike Caputo, the Democratic whip in the West Virginia House of Delegates. "I'm not ready to give up the fight."

Caputo supports Tennant's economic messaging around coal, which couples red-meat criticism of the Obama administration with calls for a major U.S. investment in carbon capture and storage technology. If coal companies tap $8 billion in DOE loan guarantees to help build a cleaner coal plant -- which they don't appear eager to do -- Tennant says it could extend the life of thermal coal, the largest source of smokestack emissions.

Tennant emphasizes her support for miners in the battle for tougher safety regulations, better pay and long-term health benefits. She criticizes U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy for picking Pittsburgh over West Virginia for a public meeting this summer on the agency's proposed carbon emissions rule for power plants.

"Do you know how close Pittsburgh is? I could throw a rock and hit Pittsburgh," she told EnergyWire.

Economic identity

West Virginia has lost about one-quarter of its coal-related jobs since 2011, or about 7,000 jobs. The state is producing the least coal since the early 1980s, and for multiple compounding reasons: Cheap natural gas competes with coal, environmental regulations make it more expensive to burn coal for electricity, West Virginia coal has lost market share to lower-cost coal basins in Montana and Illinois, the price of steel-making coal is depressed amid a global glut, and the easy Appalachian coal has already been mined. What's left is geologically complex and expensive to mine.

Third-quarter financial results for coal companies reinforce a broader challenge nationwide. On Monday, St. Louis-based Peabody Energy Corp. reported a $150 million loss in the quarter compared to a year ago. The share price for the largest U.S. coal company dropped 5.1 percent to $10.46.

Then there are efforts to cut carbon emissions tied to climate change, which the Obama administration has made a priority during the president's final two years in office. Real or not real, Obama's "war on coal" has made it harder for Tennant to talk about other things.

"Energy starts with coal," she told a business group in nearby Fairmont.

"Coal's part of the economic identity," said Kondik, the political analyst in Virginia. "They feel like the national Democratic Party is hostile to coal, and by extension hostile to them."

John Deskins, director of WVU's Bureau of Business and Economic Research, said the double-edged success of the energy sector in West Virginia, including shale gas, has sucked the wind out of other sectors -- mainly small businesses and any state-level emphasis on attracting other industries.

For the size of its population, West Virginia has fewer small businesses than most other states, he noted.

"We want the energy industry to be strong, but we sorely need industrial diversification," he said. "All the GDP growth in the last two years has been from that one sector."