Democrat presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2019 vow to ban fracking and her subsequent alleged flop-flop reminds many working-class Pennsylvanians why highfalutin politicians are generally distrusted and perhaps loathed.
“The road to power is paved with hypocrisy,” as the character Frank Underwood in the Netflix show House of Cards neatly packaged it.
Harris’s sudden reversal on fracking policy was enough to sow skepticism, mistrust, and cynicism about her candidacy among working-class voters, but the reversal appeared even more sinister. Harris deployed an anonymous campaign aide to issue the flip flop to Politico — a Washington, DC, insider publication — a tactic that shields her from far-left attacks and distances her from any statement on the record.
Nobody in the Keystone State appears to know what Harris truly believes about fracking or what she would do if she wins in November. She has not directly addressed how she would treat the oil and gas industry should she win despite hosting an event on Friday to divulge how she might fix the economy under the administration’s leadership.
Seventy percent of registered Democrats and independents who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 are mostly in the dark about many of Harris’s controversial and radical positions, a recent poll shows.RELATED — Trump: Harris’s Honeymoon Period Will End When People Get to Know Her
C-SPAN“She really needs to explain what her point of view is, what her plan and direction would be,” executive director of the Builders Guild of Western Pennsylvania Jeff Nobers told Bloomberg on Wednesday. “My question to her is what has changed that makes you say you don’t support a ban on fracking, because fracking hasn’t changed.”
“There’s already uncertainty with just what does she believe, what she would do,” Nobers, who is also the executive director of Pittsburgh Works Together, told the Washington Post. “And if she doesn’t support a ban on fracking, what is her energy policy plan?”
Many remain convinced that Harris will attack the oil and gas industry despite her flip-flop if she wins the presidency. “Energy is a big deal here,” Mickey Molinaro, an asphalt worker, told Bloomberg. “Harris supports the Green New Deal and that kind of stuff. She runs on a platform that’s anti-fossil fuel.”Thirty-one-year-old Emanuel Paris, who works with his family’s 400-employee construction firm, said Harris’s flip-flop on fracking would drive him to vote for Trump. “It’s not like we can just shut off everything else and switch to solar and wind,” Paris told the Post.
Paris is just one Keystone State voter turned off by Harris’s perceived alliance with those who support the Green New Deal, a legislative package that seeks to leverage global warming to reconstruct the U.S. economy into a socialist utopia.
Doing away with fracking would mean terminating jobs and state revenue. About 2,000 landowners collect royalties from leasing their properties to natural gas wells, the Marcellus Shale Coalition estimated. Those royalties are taxes and provide local municipalities revenue for public schools, police departments, and conservation projects.
Fracking generated $3.2 billion in state and local tax revenue, the Post reported, with royalty payments soaring above $6 billion. About 121,000 jobs for Pennsylvanian residents are linked to fracking, an FTI Consulting study found in 2022.
Pennsylvania is a significant state in the Democrat’s Blue Wall strategy to prevent former President Donald Trump from completing the greatest comeback in American political history. Most surveys show Harris holds a slight lead over the former president but within the margin of error.
Many political experts predict that whoever wins the Keystone State will win the presidential election. Like most elections, voter turnout in November will likely decide it.
“Remember, Pennsylvania, I said it: she wants no fracking. She’s on tape,” Trump said at a rally in Minnesota in July. “The beautiful thing about modern technology is when you say something, you’re screwed if it’s bad.”Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
