Pennsylvania environmentalists are dismissing Kamala Harris’ statement defending her pivot on fracking, and say her opposition to a ban on the practice divides voters in the top battleground state.
Fracking is just one of the shifts Harris got asked about in her prime time interview with CNN, after jettisoning several left wing positions she adopted during her presidential campaign in 2019.
‘My values have not changed,’ Harris told the network. ‘We can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.’
‘Her values haven’t changed except her values have changed,’ scoffed Karen Feridun, co-founder of the Pennsylvania-based Better Path Coalition
‘She was very clear she was a supporter of Green New Deal, she was banning fracking and then all of a sudden she wasn’t. That’s not a good position. And I think it’s a bad assumption that Pennsylvania is never going to vote for somebody who’s anti-fracking and who would plan to ban it,’ she told DailyMail.com Friday, while environmentalists were buzzing about the issue in online forums.
‘It’s something that doesn’t line up with having strong values of protecting the planet and so saying that seems disingenuous,’ she fumed.
Maya van Rossum of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, where there are regional fracking bans put in place by a regulatory board, said, ‘It is incumbent on our on our governmental leaders, whether they’re elected or appointed to office, to take a position based on the facts and science and reality and to do what is best for the greater good, presently and generationally.’
‘It’s amoral unpriccinipled for anybody in a position of power to be supporting fracking,’ she said.
Political experts conducting spot analysis on Harris’s interview pointed to the obvious importance of Pennsylvania, where Harris has been in a virtual tie with Donald Trump in the polls since seizing the Democratic nomination from Joe Biden, who himself didn’t push a fracking ban while funnelling billions to green technology initiatives.
The state has 19 electoral votes and the most contested prize of the election. It is among the ‘Blue Wall” states that Trump won in 2016, and Joe Biden pried back in 2020. The polls are tight, and Trump held a campaign rally in Johnstown Friday night. Western Pennsylvania is where companies tap the Marcellus Shale to capture natural gas through hydraulic fracturing (fracking), using a chemical mix that environmentalists say risks the water supply.
But according to Feridun, the fracking issue isn’t clear cut.
‘There’s a difference between what, for instance, labor unions in this state want, and what the public wants and and so I think the Building Trades have had an outsized role in a lot of things having to do with energy policy in the state. … I can only imagine that there was some pressure put on her to, you know, maintain the Biden position,’ she speculated.
There aren’t many recent polls on the topic. But a 2022 Pennsylvania energy survey by Muhlenberg College revealed a close split.
When asked about extraction of natural gas from shale deposits in the state, 19 percent of Pennsylvanians strongly supported it, with another 29 percent strongly supporting it – for a total of 48 percent.
There were also 19 percent opposed, with 25 percent ‘strongly’ opposed, for a slighly lower 44 percent. Eight percent weren’t sure.
But while the support was unchanged from six years earlier, the ‘somewhat’ opposed had increased by three points, and the amount ‘strongly’ opposed jumped by 9 percentage points.
Harris also got taken to task by CNN fact checker Daniel Dale, who made a name for himself out debunking false claims by Donald Trump in 2016.
Harris told CNN’s Dana Bash that ‘I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking. As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking.’
Her interviewer then confronted her with her 2019 statement, during the primaries, when she said there’s ‘no question I’m in favor of banning fracking’ and that she would do it on her first day in office.
‘In 2020 I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I have not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word,’ she said.
‘The fact check bottom line is that she did not actually make clear at a 2020 debate that she had changed her previous support for a fracking ban,’ he said.
‘Nowhere in there does she make clear that she had abandoned her previous support for a fracking ban; rather, she repeated that Joe Biden, the head of the democratic ticket at the time, would himself not ban fracking,’ he observed on air Thursday night.
Among those complaining online was former Pennsylvania state House candidate Ginny Kerslake.
‘Ugh. Listening to @MSNBC and hearing them suggest Harris needs to address fracking because “It’s a huge job creator in Pennsylvania”. No. No it’s not. But it does bring huge harm. @KamalaHarris @TimWalz @KamalaHQ,’ she wrote.