ERIE, Pennsylvania — John Fetterman gives Democrats what is perhaps their best chance this November to flip a red seat blue and help them hold on to the Senate. But he’ll have to convince enough Pennsylvania voters that he can serve both Democrats’ aggressive climate change agenda and support the state’s prolific natural gas sector — something that, to many, represents a complete contradiction in terms.
The former mayor of Braddock and 2016 Senate candidate, who clinched his nomination during an election cycle characterized by the war in Ukraine, steep energy prices, and rising demand for oil and gas worldwide, has reconsidered his past opposition to fracking in Pennsylvania and now instead pledges to protect natural gas workers. At the same time, Fetterman’s messaging on climate mirrors that of other liberals in the party, and he endorsed Democrats’ signature legislative achievement this Congress, the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides for hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to facilitate an economywide “transition” away from fossil fuels.
Over time, that transition would, by design, displace hundreds of thousands of oil and gas sector workers who have lucrative gigs drilling wells and fracking for gas, servicing rigs, and managing pipelines, presenting a special challenge to a candidate billing himself as hawkish on climate and a champion of union energy sector labor.
NATURAL GAS CAN’T BE REPLACED BY GREEN SOURCES, INDUSTRY ARGUES
Fetterman and many Democrats maintain that climate change is an existential threat that necessitates ending the oil and gas industries sooner rather than later — a process they argue will also protect consumers from high prices for gasoline, natural gas, and electricity.
But Fetterman is under pressure to avoid alienating rural voters who work in or benefit from an industry that was responsible, directly and indirectly, for some 6.1% of Pennsylvania’s total employment in 2019, according to one estimate.
“He will try to be as environmentally conscientious as he can be while also keeping an eye on working-class concerns,” Jeff Bloodworth, a political historian and director of the Public Service & Global Affairs program at Gannon University, told the Washington Examiner.
In Pennsylvania, those priorities conflict, according to Bloodworth, who said, “Eventually, you can’t square that circle.”
“It’s either, like, you’re in the fracking bucket or you’re the climate change bucket and you’re trying to transition to green energy,” Bloodworth said. Where the green energy transition implies job displacement, a liberal Democrat running for statewide office in Pennsylvania has a distinct problem.
“If you think about rural Pennsylvania, there aren’t many jobs that pay really well like there are in fracking,” he said. “How do you tell people in rural Pennsylvania that have an $80,000 a year job, ‘You can’t have it because of climate change concerns’?”
Fetterman, whom Bloodworth called “Bernie Sanders in Carhartt,” doesn’t look like a typical congressional Democrat, but in many ways, he sounds like one. His campaign webpage offers rebukes of fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil of the sort that’s leveled every other day by Democrats in Congress, and he advocates transitioning to clean energy “as quickly as possible.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), notably, came close to winning the Democratic nomination for president on a platform of banning fracking nationwide.
When running for Senate in 2016, Fetterman slammed the gas industry and supported a moratorium on fracking, but he’s since changed his position. The adoption of new state rules regulating fracking in October 2016 made the activity safer and cleaner, his campaign told the Washington Examiner.
This election cycle, Fetterman has been entirely comfortable campaigning on climate change and supporting energy jobs in Pennsylvania, the nation’s No. 2 natural gas producer behind Texas. He pledged on Thursday to “protect livelihood of natural gas workers” during a brief video appearance featured at Shale Insight 2022, an annual gas industry conference hosted by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, where he also shouted out the labor unions that built and maintain the state’s energy sector.
“I’ve always said Republicans need to be honest about climate change, and Democrats need to be honest about energy and energy security,” Fetterman said.
Republicans aren’t letting him off that easy. His Republican opponent, celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, has criticized Fetterman repeatedly for previously supporting the moratorium and for calling fracking “a stain on our state and natural resources” in online posts back in 2016.
Joe Calvello, communications director for the campaign, said he no longer represents Fetterman’s position and that he “rejects this whole notion of jobs vs. climate change.”
“One way or another, there’s green energy coming, and let’s make sure that those jobs are here in Pennsylvania and it’s not replacing any jobs we have [in] the fracking industry,” he said.
He could face intense pressure in the Senate to vote for regulations that affect the natural gas industry. In this Congress, for example, Democrats have sought to advance measures to penalize utilities for using natural gas. They also have sought to regulate methane emissions more aggressively, regulations some in the industry support but that other players, like the Marcellus Shale Coalition, which represents producers in Pennsylvania, oppose.
Energy security and the supply vulnerabilities exposed by the war in Ukraine have changed the calculations to a large degree around energy among governments in Europe, which, in the face of a supply crunch, have inked new gas deals and earmarked billions to fund new gas infrastructure.
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The Biden administration has said more renewable energy is the ultimate answer to high prices and volatility in energy markets, but it has also endorsed more domestic oil and gas development to bring down prices and support allies in Europe, who are paying many times more for energy this year than last.
For the U.S. natural gas industry, the war and its disruption to markets provide business and geopolitical opportunities: Increased domestic exports can strengthen the industry, facilitate job growth, and help protect allies from Russian influence.
It’s not far off from how the Fetterman camp is making its pitch.
Natural gas jobs “power the state,” Calvello said. “They let us keep the lights on, heat our homes.”
“John is going to support the union workers who are working out there in [the] natural gas industry in Pennsylvania,” he added. “He’s not some Democrat who’s going to tell you, ‘Oh, you know, it’s time to go learn how to code.'”
