Cynthia Lummis, the only female member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, is pursuing a return to Congress as a senator representing Wyoming to secure a future for fossil fuels.
“A great deal of my interest in returning to Washington is based on the tough climate that our energy sector faces,” said Lummis, 65, who left Congress in 2017 after eight years as Wyoming’s sole representative in the House.
Lummis is positioned to take advantage of the state’s first election-year Senate vacancy since 1995 in a state that has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1970.
Wyoming, the state with the smallest population, is the nation’s largest coal producer thanks to its Powder River Basin and one of the top producers of oil and gas.
Fossil fuels are the state’s engine, its top economic sector, helping fund state and local budgets. Now, that status is under threat due to competition from cleaner alternatives and a political consensus on the need to address climate change.
“The changes in the energy economy have been very substantial very quickly,” Lummis said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
Wyoming has suffered from declining coal production. Coal plant closures have accelerated under the Trump administration due to relentless competition from cheaper natural gas, which emits half as much carbon as coal, and renewables.
Like most parts of the country, Wyoming is diversifying its energy mix to include cleaner sources. The state has some of the most considerable opportunities to take advantage of wind power in the nation thanks to its mountainous, rural terrain.
Lummis, a former cattle rancher and lawyer worth $14 million, said she is “on board” with the shift occurring among many Republicans in Congress. They acknowledge that climate change is a problem that the government should address by promoting private-sector innovation in clean technologies.
But Lummis is also aligned with her colleagues in taking exception to Democrats who say the issue is a “crisis” that requires immediate, aggressive action.
“Those who say climate change is an existential threat are completely mistaken,” Lummis said. “We do have time to address this. We should address it.”
She also insisted that fossil fuel use doesn’t need to be reduced to address climate change adequately, a view shared by most Republicans that is at odds with what climate scientists recommend.
“You do it without reducing fossil fuel use through capturing emissions,” Lummis said. “There is no silver bullet to any of this, but time is on our side.”
Lummis said the federal government should look to bolster the use of technologies that can capture carbon from coal and gas plants, an expensive proposition, by offering tax credits to developers.
Coal jobs won’t return to their peak, she acknowledges, and they won’t look the same.
“I don’t know a single person in coal country who thinks it will return to all-time production levels of the past,” Lummis said. “People in Wyoming are open to a new future for coal. We are working to understand what the new normal is going to be in coal country.”
Lummis said she sees a bright future for developing products from coal, such as residential decking and home construction material, and for using captured carbon from coal plants to produce more oil.
“We want to make sure as many as the coal mining jobs that have been eliminated from coal are available in other sectors of the energy economy,” Lummis said.
Lummis differs with most congressional Republicans in at least one way. She dislikes wind energy and the large turbines that generate it, mostly for aesthetic reasons.
“Wind energy in a beautiful state like mine is creating impairments to our viewsheds,” Lummis said, calling the turbines disruptive to a big tourism state. “I have a problem with that. I am much more supportive of solar than wind.”
Wind energy is produced mostly in red states, including Texas, Iowa, and her own, giving the energy source many prominent Republican backers, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
However, Lummis wants to kill tax credits for wind projects that are set to expire this year.
Asked how else she would look to reduce emissions, Lummis said she supports efforts to make buildings more energy-efficient and to improve automobile efficiency “within reason.”
President Trump has weakened strict fuel-efficiency standards set by the Obama administration, which environmentalists said was the most significant climate policy ever enacted in the United States since transportation is the leading source of carbon emissions.
Despite his promises, Trump has also failed to bring coal jobs back, but Lummis said Wyomingites don’t fault him for that.
“They are not in the least bit disappointed in how the president discussed it because the president speaks in absolutes. He does not make nuanced comments,” Lummis said.
Lummis is running close to Trump because he is “very popular” in Wyoming, and she still faces a primary on Aug. 18, when she will compete in a crowded field of nine other Republicans.
Lummis is a heavy favorite, endorsed by incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi, who is retiring, and by John Barrasso, the state’s other sitting senator, who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.
She is also friendly with Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, a founding member of the Freedom Caucus who endorsed her when she vied twice to be Trump’s secretary of the Interior Department.
Lummis lost out both times, first to former Montana congressman Ryan Zinke and then to David Bernhardt, who was Zinke’s deputy.
Lummis said she was “profoundly disappointed” to lose out to Bernhardt after interviewing for the top Interior Department spot in January 2019. Still, she has been “quite pleased” with his agenda, noting his success in rolling back regulations and appointing conservative personnel.
She said she supports Bernhardt’s recent nomination of William Pendley to lead the Bureau of Land Management despite his history of making dismissive comments on climate change and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“He is a hugely controversial figure,” Lummis said. “I would absolutely support his nomination.”
Prognosticators rate Lummis’s race as “solid Republican,” but her potential Democratic opponents see her as vulnerable nonetheless and disagree with her stance on climate change.
“Climate change is an existential threat,” said Nathan Wendt, a foreign policy expert at a consulting firm. He is one of the youngest candidates in the Democratic primary, at 39 years old. “While coal use is not disappearing, we need leaders who are looking to the future,” Wendt told the Washington Examiner in an email.
Yana Ludwig, a self-described socialist and Green New Deal supporter competing in Wyoming’s Democratic primary, is even more critical of Lummis.
“To perpetuate the idea that we can save coal and oil will ultimately be deeply damaging to our communities in Wyoming and other current fossil fuel states, as it delays our state and federal governments taking seriously the need for transitioning,” Ludwig told the Washington Examiner in an email. “If your priority is preserving your view rather than preserving our planet’s capacity to support life, you have the wrong priorities,” Ludwig added, poking Lummis’s opposition to wind power.
Lummis said she isn’t taking the race for granted. She began campaigning face-to-face in all of Wyoming’s 22 counties a month ago after laying low during the worst of the coronavirus.
“We always treat these primaries as competitive because anything can happen in politics,” Lummis said.
