Kamala toe’s campaign has said she no longer endorses a ban on fracking but most strategists say it won’t sway key voters in Nov.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has said she no longer endorses a ban on fracking, but political strategists and energy experts say the sudden policy shift will do little to move the needle with key voters in November.
Harris said in 2020 there is “no question” she would end fracking if elected president, but her campaign recently told The Hill she no longer wants to outlaw the practice after videos of her endorsing a ban resurfaced following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race.
The campaign can walk back Harris’ old fracking position as it pleases, but it likely won’t be enough to allay the concerns of crucial voting blocs — particularly more rural, blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania — that Harris may wage war on the industry or otherwise escalate Biden’s climate agenda to their detriment if elected, political strategists and energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“She is going to find herself between a rock and a hard place on the issue of fracking, and also other issues like Gaza, too. She has all of her past statements, and the Biden-Harris administration record, which is against fracking and exports of liquefied natural gas,” Jon McHenry, a GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research, told the DCNF.
“And that’s great for her base supporters, the people who were upset about Joe Biden representing Democrats a couple of weeks ago and are excited about Kamala Harris, who want her to ban fracking, and they’re excited to have a younger, more liberal candidate running for president.”
“The problem is she’s got to win independents in states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan and Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona, who want to see more energy developed in this country and for us to be more energy independent,” McHenry continued. “She wants to have her energy and ban it too.” …
The Biden administration decided in January to freeze approvals for new LNG export terminals, a move that critics say was meant to appease climate-focused voters and deep-pocketed environmental interests ahead of an election.
“Climate change and banning fracking were CENTRAL to her 2020 campaign! I mean, she went on the Tonight Show and performed a song about it! Nobody is going to believe anything other than she’s a climate cultist,” Scott Jennings, a political strategist and an on-air pundit for CNN, told the DCNF.
“She’s the Greta of the U.S. government, and that ought to scare the bejeezus out of every energy worker in Pennsylvania and any American who would suffer under her radical views.”
Harris has already racked up endorsements from major, deep-pocketed environmental organizations that oppose fracking just weeks after announcing her candidacy.
Meanwhile, two of the more radical groups in the environmentalist movement — the Sunrise Movement and Climate Defiance — have so far withheld official endorsements. …
The political and electoral ramifications of Harris’ fracking flip-flop could be most visible in Pennsylvania, a huge natural gas producer and a crucial swing state in the 2024 cycle.
Former President Donald Trump carried Pennsylvania in 2016 by a tight margin before losing it to Biden in 2020 in another close race; the state figures to be hotly-contested again in 2024, according to McHenry, with a new poll from Susquehanna Polling showing Harris up on Trump by four percentage points with 7% of respondents unsure who they will back in November.
Pennsylvania produced more natural gas than any state other than Texas in 2022, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and the natural gas industry directly or indirectly supported about 123,000 jobs in the state as of 2022, according to an August 2023 report prepared by FTI Consulting for the Marcellus Shale Coalition.
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