ATLASBURG, Pa. — After years of positioning herself as a climate crusader and ardent opponent of fracking, Kamala Harris has avoided mention of such credentials in this must-win state for Democrats, where natural gas drives the economy, culture and everyday conversation.
Her new approach is proving a tough sell.
Many of the swing voters here whose livelihoods rise and fall with the fortunes of the fossil energy industry have not forgotten the last time Harris ran for president, when she called for a ban on fracking — extracting natural gas by creating cracks in the earth’s bedrock. It is a position she now disavows. Even the boom in oil and gas production under the Biden-Harris administration is failing to assuage anxieties that the halcyon days of fracking for natural gas here would dim if Harris wins the White House.
Those concerns are putting out of reach voters who might otherwise fit the profile of the vice president’s target audience. They are people like 31-year-old Emanuel Paris, whose quest to expand his family’s 400-employee construction firm into green energy projects drove him to get a master’s degree in sustainability management. He has no doubt that climate change is real.
But Paris will be voting for Donald Trump.
“It’s not like we can just shut off everything else and switch to solar and wind,” Paris said at the business office of the century-old firm started by his great-grandfather, an Italian immigrant who leaned on New Deal projects to grow the business in its early years.
Paris said green energy work is still years away from replacing the contracts the firm has building gas pipelines. He rattles off a litany of Biden-Harris administration policies he says are inhibiting growth in the local energy sector, such as restrictions on permits and cumbersome regulations. He called the vice president’s disavowal of the fracking ban she earlier championed a “grab for votes.”
Pennsylvania’s standing as one of the world’s largest sources of natural gas is creating mounting tension for Democrats aiming to keep it as a pillar in their electoral “Blue Wall” while also stepping up the energy transition. Harris, a Californian with a deep record of clashing with the oil and gas sector, may face a tougher path than Joe Biden did in 2020. Scranton native Biden, who is perceived as more centrist, won Pennsylvania by just 81,000 votes.
The liberal bent of the Democratic ticket was solidified when Harris picked as her running mate Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, a climate hawk who last year signed a law mandating that his state’s electricity grid run entirely on green energy by 2040. The team’s robust support for electric vehicles, tougher environmental rules and increased accountability for fossil fuel companies has helped energize the Democratic base but is also creating anxiety for swing voters who could be key to victory. In choosing her running mate, Harris passed over Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a popular moderate who might have assuaged the concerns of his fellow Pennsylvanians reliant on the energy economy.
Essential to rebuilding the Democratic coalition in this state is hanging onto a sizable share of voters in places like Washington County, where progressive climate and energy policies have in the last two elections pushed families who voted Democratic for generations into Trump’s corner. The Trump campaign and its allies have spent tens of millions of dollars since 2016 hammering Democrats on the issue. The Harris call for a fracking ban in 2019 is a focal point of their current attacks.
“It is a gift for ad makers,” said Zack Roday, a GOP consultant. “It crystallizes the issue in a way that is going to light a fire with a lot of voters. This impacts people’s livelihood. She knows that, which is why she already walked it back.”
The Washington Post polling average in Pennsylvania currently shows a close race, with Harris edging out Trump by one percentage point, well within a normal-sized polling error.
The natural gas industry’s reach in this state is expansive. It has brought shiny office parks, bustling new residential subdivisions and manicured golf courses to areas that had earlier been defined by emptying downtowns and steady layoffs. Some 200,000 landowners in the state are receiving royalties from the natural gas wells on their property, according to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, an industry group. Some of the biggest royalty checks are going to local governments and school districts.
There were 121,000 Pennsylvanians working in jobs connected to fracking in 2022, according to an industry-funded study by FTI Consulting, with an average salary of more than $97,000. It generated $3.2 billion in state and local tax revenue, and royalty payments to landowners exceeded $6 billion.
But fracking is a major climate problem. It is associated with the release of large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Unfettered production propels construction of more natural gas power plants, which are threatening to push the world’s targets for curbing global warming far out of reach. The process can also lead to water contamination.
Progressives have long been rallying to ban it, and Harris was hardly an outlier in the party when she joined 10 other Democrats vying for the 2020 nomination in vowing to stop fracking.
Now, with polls showing Pennsylvania is a toss-up, her campaign says the candidate’s past talk of bans is old news and is being misrepresented by her rival, Trump. In a statement, the Harris campaign did not explain the candidate’s shift in thinking but did say that domestic energy production is far higher under the current administration than it was when Trump was president, and that more energy jobs were created by this White House.
“America now has the highest ever domestic energy production,” the statement said. “This Administration created 300,000 energy jobs, while Trump lost nearly a million and his Project 2025 would undo the enormous progress we’ve made the past four years.”
The challenge for Democrats is that no matter how much they stress the industry’s prosperity under the Biden-Harris administration, there is deep bitterness over some of its landmark energy moves.
Several voters interviewed recalled the administration putting energy developers on notice the week Biden took office, when he canceled the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which was proposed to transfer oil from the tar sands in Canada to Gulf Coast ports. Amid climate concerns and opposition from environmental groups, federal regulators have been reluctant to green-light several proposed pipelines that would enable Pennsylvania companies to extract and ship even more gas.
And the administration’s pause on new infrastructure for exporting liquefied natural gas was taken as an affront in a state that sees an opportunity to be a global hub for such exports. Pennsylvania’s U.S. senators, both Democrats, pushed back publicly on that policy. Shapiro’s electoral success in the state has been attributed in part to his support for gas development.
Jeff Nobers, executive director of Pittsburgh Works Together, a coalition of union and business leaders, said Harris’s pronouncement at a 2019 CNN town hall that “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking” still resonates.
“Whether she likes it or not, she said it, and that gets remembered,” he said. “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?”
At a community fair in Ellwood City, Smokin’ Steer BBQ owner Dave Hunter, taking a break from the kitchen in his 40-foot-long food truck, said energy policy is among the reasons he won’t vote for a Democrat in a presidential race, even as he votes for Democrats in some local elections. “Banning fracking?” he said. “Why would you ever be talking about that?”
The energy policies that could cost Harris votes in this region are popular with climate-minded young voters in urban areas like Philadelphia that Democrats are also eager to energize. Some Democrats argue that the stakes of the November election are so high that the share of swing voters who are going to cast ballots on fracking alone is negligible.
“There comes a point where governance, democracy, sanity and protecting this country outweigh any other issue,” said former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter.
Voters like Michelle Emery, a 49-year-old marketing manager for a company that serves the fossil fuel industry, said her distaste for some of the current administration’s restrictions on gas production won’t stop her from casting a ballot for Harris. Stopping the Trump-led assault on reproductive rights, she said, is paramount for her this year.
“I would rather be unemployed than have to imagine a world where my nieces grow up without basic human rights and bodily autonomy,” said Emery, a native of the Washington County town of Eighty Four whose father worked in the coal mines for decades.
Down the road and over a few hills at a popular pub called the Bavington Roadhouse, co-owner Ron Valenti relies on a steady stream of customers from the energy sector to keep business bustling. He’s also no fan of the Biden-Harris administration’s approach to energy. But the lifelong resident of the region says he wants to hear out the vice president before deciding how he will vote.
In a region where longtime registered Democrats like 64-year-old Valenti feel increasingly alienated from the party, it is going to be a much tougher sell for Harris than it might have been a couple of decades ago.
“Back in the day I would just vote Democrat right down the ticket,” he said. “Today? No.”