FILE - In this Jan. 8, 2017 file photo, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice delivers his first State of the State speech in Charleston, W.Va. Justice is switching parties to join Republicans as President Donald... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Jan. 8, 2017 file photo, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice delivers his first State of the State speech in Charleston, W.Va. Justice is switching parties to join Republicans as President Donald Trump plans a visit to the increasingly conservative state. (AP Photo/Walter Scriptunas II, File) (Associated Press) 
 
 HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced Thursday he's switching parties to join Republicans as President Donald Trump visited the increasingly conservative state. 
 
 Justice told about 9,000 Trump supporters at a rally in Huntington that he will be changing his registration Friday. He recently visited the White House twice with proposals on manufacturing and coal, neither he nor Trump are politicians and they both ran to get something done, he said. 
 
 "This man is a good man. He's got a backbone. He's got real ideas," Justice said. "He cares about America. He cares about us in West Virginia." 
 
 Trump said they spoke a few weeks ago about working together to open coal mines and create jobs in furniture manufacturing and other forms of manufacturing. "But Gov. Justice did something else very important tonight. He showed the country that our agenda rises above left or right," he said. 
 
 Justice was elected in November with just 49 percent of the vote, 20 percentage points behind Trump's total in the presidential contest in the state. Trump won 77 percent of West Virginia's Republican primary voters in May. 
 
 The president promised throughout the campaign to resurrect the lagging coal industry that has declined amid changing energy markets, leaving many West Virginia communities devastated. The industry and many of its workers have blamed the decline mostly on former President Barack Obama and his environmental policies. 
 
 Justice's defection leaves Democrats with just 15 governors among 50 states. 
 
 In West Virginia, his jump is another blow for Democrats in a state they once ran without opposition. U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin and state Treasurer John Perdue will be the remaining statewide elected Democrats. Manchin is up for re-election in 2018, one of 10 Democratic senators running in states Trump won, a dynamic that gives Democrats an uphill path to reclaiming a Senate majority. 
 
 Manchin said he'll always be a West Virginia Democrat and was disappointed by Justice's decision but said he'll work with anyone regardless of party affiliation to benefit West Virginians. 
 
 Elected in his first run for statewide office, Justice is a 66-year-old businessman whose family owns farms and coal mines who largely funded his own campaign against then West Virginia Republican Senate President Bill Cole. He has spoken often during the campaign and since publicly about his friendship with the Trump family and hosted Donald Trump Jr. turkey hunting and trout fishing earlier this year. 
 
 Justice has turned the daily business operations over to his children while governor. He battled the Republican-controlled Legislature in his first year to limit budget cuts to Medicaid and to state colleges and universities, sometimes with public theatrics like bringing cow manure to a press conference. 
 
 He said Thursday that it was the defection from his positions by minority Democrats that resulted in outcomes that hurt people. He said both his parents were staunch Republicans. "Today I tell you as West Virginians I can't help you any more being a Democrat governor," he said. 
 
 Republican House Speaker Tim Armstead said the increases in Republican registration and elected officials show people in the state want change. "We welcome all West Virginians to the Republican ranks," he said. 
 
 "We're eager to work with Gov. Justice to apply our team's conservative principles to the executive branch and make a clean break from the status quo that has dominated the previous two administrations," Senate President Mitch Carmichael said. 
 
 West Virginia Democratic Party Chairwoman Belinda Biafore said Justice became a Democrat because they care about people and then took advantage of them by taking their money and votes. "I think we can all guess just who he cares about by his decision today and it's not the people of West Virginia," she said. 
 
 Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Republicans represent the state's future and she's ready to work with Justice to grow the economy and fight for energy jobs. 
 
 In the national debate over health care, Justice expressed worries about future health coverage for 175,000 West Virginians in the expanded Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, but declined to push to repeal and replace "Obamacare." He said he believes Republicans and Democrats will "get it right" when they work together to overhaul the law. 
 
 Rep. Evan Jenkins, who switched from Democrat to Republican and won a U.S. House seat in 2014, said at a meet-and-greet in Huntington before the rally that "so many people in recent years have switched from Democrat to Republican, and if Jim Justice is making the switch, I welcome him to the Republican Party." 
 
 Jenkins is now running for Manchin's seat. 
 
 In May 2015, when he announced his candidacy, Justice said he wanted to put aside partisan politics and that he had changed his party registration multiple times. "I am much more suited to be a Democrat because I truly want to be the person who is trying to take up for the little guy," he said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Michael Virtanen in Morgantown and Jonathan Mattise in Nashville contributed to this report. ||||| HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (Reuters) - West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, standing next to President Donald Trump at a rally on Thursday night, announced that he was changing political parties, ditching the Democrats and joining Trump’s Republicans. 
 
 President Trump talks with West Virginia's Democratic Governor Jim Justice after he announced that he is changing parties during a rally in Huntington, West Virginia. REUTERS/Carlos Barria 
 
 “I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor,” Justice told the crowd. “So tomorrow I will be changing my registration to Republican,” he said to loud cheers. 
 
 Justice, a billionaire businessman with interests in coal and agriculture, won election in November as a Democrat in his first attempt at political office. Until 2015, he had been a registered Republican. 
 
 Trump, who won West Virginia by 42 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton, campaigned on a promise to bring back coal jobs, an important industry in the state. 
 
 Justice said his late mother would have told him about switching parties: “Jimmy, it’s about damn time you came to your senses.” 
 
 Justice told the crowd he had met with Trump twice at the White House in the past several weeks to present ideas on coal and manufacturing. 
 
 “He’s got a backbone. He’s got real ideas. He cares about America. He cares about us in West Virginia,” Justice said of Trump, a fellow billionaire businessman. 
 
 Trump, who earlier in the day promised a “very big announcement” at the rally, welcomed Justice into the party’s ranks. 
 
 “Having big Jim as a Republican is such an honor,” Trump said of the 6-foot-7-inch governor. 
 
 With Justice changing his affiliation, there are now 34 Republican governors, 15 Democrats and one independent. Republicans will now control both the legislature and the governorship in 26 of the 50 states. 
 
 Republicans control both houses of the West Virginia legislature.
– President Trump was teasing a "very big announcement" Thursday night in West Virginia, CNN reports. And while West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had hoped it would be "good news" about jobs or the opioid crisis, it appears instead that the state's Democratic Gov. Jim Justice will reveal he's switching parties. According to Politico, no one in the Democratic Party was warned about Justice's plans. “Obviously we're pissed. I mean let's face it, we put a lot of effort in the 2015 election to elect this man as governor,” a Democratic operative in West Virginia says. Democrats had held the governorship in West Virginia since 2001. While Democrats weren't given notice of Justice's switch, they probably shouldn't be surprised. Justice only joined the Democratic Party in 2015 to run for governor. He had been a registered Independent and Republican prior to that and even donated to the Republican Governors' Association a few years before his run as a Democrat. He's also friends with the Trump family and Sen. Mitch McConnell. Plus, the ever-more conservative West Virginia is a hotbed of Trump support. With Justice's defection, there are only 15 Democratic governors in the US and only six states in which Democrats control the governorship and both legislative chambers, the Hill reports. Meanwhile, West Virginia becomes the 26th state in which Republicans control all three.