“There’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at a 2019 CNN town hall.
Harris’s unequivocal support of banning fracking could have permanently ruined her chances of collecting Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes five years later.
Pennsylvania is a significant state in the Democrat’s Blue Wall strategy to prevent former President Donald Trump from completing the greatest political comeback in American political history. Whoever wins the Keystone State, many political experts predict, wins the presidential election.
Through anonymous campaign sources, Harris allegedly flip-flopped in July on her support of banning fracking, a process that fuels American energy independence and boosts Pennsylvania’s economy.
The policy reversal might be too late for Harris.
Thirty-one-year-old Emanuel Paris, who works with his family’s 400-employee construction firm, said Harris’s flip-flop on fracking will 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 Washington 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 property 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.
Jeff Nobers, executive director of Pittsburgh Works Together, explained Harris’s promise to ban fracking is burned into his memory. “Whether she likes it or not, she said it, and that gets remembered,” he told the Post. “People are looking at whether companies will be willing to invest here, what they are willing to put into this industry. And you have your potential next president having taken that position as recently as the last election.”
“There’s already uncertainty with just what does she believe, what she would do,” he said. “And if she doesn’t support a ban on fracking, what is her energy policy plan?”
Others questioned why the Democrat party would attack the livelihoods of so many. “Banning fracking?” Smokin’ Steer BBQ owner Dave Hunter asked the Post. “Why would you ever be talking about that?”
Sixty-four-year-old Bavington Roadhouse co-owner Ron Valenti said he refuses to vote a straight Democrat ticket. “Back in the day I would just vote Democrat right down the ticket,” he told the Post. “Today? No.”
Polling in Pennsylvania shows a tight race. Most surveys show Harris holds a slight lead over Trump but within the margin of error. Like most elections, voter turnout in November will likely decide the race.
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.