DANVILLE, W.Va. — Voters in Appalachian coal country will not soon forget that Democrat Hillary Clinton told an Ohio audience in March that she would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

“It was a devastating thing for her to say,” said Betty Dolan, whose diner in this mountain hamlet offers daily testament to the ravages that mining's demise has visited upon families whose livelihoods depend on coal.

Mine closures, bankruptcies and layoffs are staples of lunchtime conversation for those who have not fled town in search of work. Like many fellow Democrats in the region, Dolan, 73, favors Republican Donald Trump for president, however rude he might seem.

“I'm going to go for the person who wants coal,” she said.

With a Trump-Clinton contest in November now all but certain, the importance of West Virginia's primaries Tuesday has diminished. But the clash over coal, climate change and jobs as the campaign passed through Appalachia foreshadows potential trouble ahead for Clinton.

While West Virginia is solidly Republican for the general election, the adjacent battleground states of Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania each include Appalachian regions where the mining jobs that Trump vows to save are the linchpin of local economies.

Clinton's remarks on coal's grim future — “I misspoke,” she conceded last week — opened the way for Trump to strengthen his bonds with the voters she offended.

“That's a tough one to explain, wouldn't you say?” Trump asked cheering supporters Thursday at a rally in Charleston, W.Va.

Trump has played to public anger over efforts by President Barack Obama, Clinton and other Democrats to scale back the burning of coal and other fossil fuels that contribute to global warming, something the GOP hopeful has dismissed as a “canard,” “hoax” and “total con job.” He cites cold weather snaps as evidence.

On the day of Obama's 2012 re-election, Trump tweeted: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” In September, he told CNN: “I don't believe in climate change.”

Clinton is trying to turn such statements against him. “When he says climate change is a Chinese hoax, what does that mean?” she said Friday on CBS. “Has he ever talked to a scientist?”

Trump could pay a price for his rejection of climate change science. Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania all include big metropolitan areas where Clinton's plans to fight global warming resonate with many moderates. Trump has positioned himself as “anti-science and anti-intellectual,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster unaffiliated with the Clinton campaign.

“There's no question in my mind that Trump loses something important with a very large constituency with his climate change position,” he said.

A recent Pew Research Center study found 77 percent of Democrats view climate change as a major threat to the U.S., but only 26 percent of Republicans see it that way.

Clinton's stumble came March 13 in a CNN town hall in Columbus, Ohio. She was answering a question on why poor Southern whites who vote Republican should back her.

“I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country, because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she said.

The damage was done, even if she quickly added, “We're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people.”

But economists doubt any president can stop coal's decline. In Appalachia, coal production has dropped 45 percent over the last decade, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. The rising use of natural gas and renewable energy has come at coal's expense. Exports are down too.

Since 2011, more than a third of the region's mining jobs have vanished, a devastating loss in towns wholly dependent on coal for survival. Lost tax revenue has forced schools to shut down or lay off teachers, 77 of them here in Boone County.

michael.finnegan@tribpub.com