Republicans shrunk the size of Democrats’ control of the House in part with wins in key races in which energy-related issues were prominent.
Here’s a recap of House election results with implications for energy policy.
*Oklahoma’s 5th District: GOP state Sen. Stephanie Bice unseated freshman Democrat Rep. Kendra Horn in a heavy oil-producing district.
Horn had tried to separate herself from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s debate comment that he’d like to transition away from oil. But Bice still portrayed Horn as a tool of Democrats who voted in Congress to restrict oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and supported Obama-era environmental regulations.
Horn was elected in an upset as part of Democrats’ “blue wave” in 2018.
*South Carolina’s 1st District: Republican Nancy Mace beat incumbent Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham after he scored an upset in 2018.
Mace and Cunningham tried to outdo each other in opposing offshore drilling. Mace was in the audience in Florida when President Trump announced his election-year flip-flop expanding an offshore drilling moratorium in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.
“I am not just a ‘no’ on offshore drilling. I am a ‘hell no,’” Mace told the Washington Examiner in an interview before Trump’s announcement.
*Michigan’s 6th District: Longtime Republican incumbent Rep. Fred Upton held off young liberal challenger Jon Hoadley in a purple district of southwest Michigan.
Hoadley unsuccessfully pushed a Green New Deal-style climate agenda, backed by the endorsement of the Sunrise Movement, an influential youth climate group.
Upton, the centrist chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, helped lead the effort by House Republicans to adjust their messaging around climate change.
*New Mexico’s 2nd District: Republican Yvette Herrell defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Xochitl Torres Small in a rematch election after losing the southern House district when the two faced off in 2018.
The large, rural district bordering Mexico spans from the Arizona to Texas state lines and experienced a boom in oil and natural gas production in recent years. The district’s economic connection to the fossil fuel industry prompted Torres Small to distance herself from Biden’s clean energy plans.
*Texas’s 7th District: Democratic Rep. Lizzie Fletcher proved an exception to the trend, winning reelection in one of the most oil- and gas-dependent districts.
Fletcher, a centrist who defeated Republican Wesley Hunt, opposed liberal proposals to restrict fracking and introduced legislation supporting carbon capture technologies for fossil fuel plants.
