When President Biden suspended his reelection campaign last Sunday and endorsed Vice President Harris as his running mate, the change at the top of the candidate slate also sent political ripples through the House race. On Friday, U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick toured a natural gas plant in Warren, Pennsylvania, and contrasted his “all energy” goals with Harris’s comments on banning fracking, which resurfaced during the 2020 campaign.
McCormick quickly pivoted last week to Harris, who is running for Sen. Bob Casey’s seat, the Republican Party’s best chance of regaining control of the House. McCormick released an ad on Tuesday replacing Harris’ most liberal statements with an endorsement of Casey, calling her “the most liberal presidential candidate in American history.” McCormick’s campaign said Casey’s endorsement of Harris is proof she is “grossly out of touch with the needs of Pennsylvanians.” A 60-second version of the ad will air in the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre and Pittsburgh markets on Monday during the Olympics.
Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick spoke to voters at the event. (Fox News)
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Former President Trump and McCormick, who made liberating American energy a campaign pillar, stuck to comments made by then-candidate Harris, including at a CNN rally in 2019, when she said, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
On Wednesday, responding to Harris’ remarks at a rally in North Carolina, Trump said, “She doesn’t want fracking.” Harris and her campaign have since walked back her now-controversial comments about fracking.
“Trump’s false claims about the fracking ban are a clear attempt to distract from his plans to enrich oil and gas executives at the expense of the middle class,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News. “The Biden-Harris Administration passed the largest climate change bill in history, and under their leadership, America now has the highest domestic energy production in history. This Administration has created 300,000 energy jobs while Trump lost nearly 1 million, and his Project 2025 would undo the tremendous progress made over the past four years.”
When asked by Fox News about Harris’ comments, McCormick pointed to the Biden-Harris administration’s record on energy policy, offering a view that contradicted that expressed by the Harris campaign.
“In this crazy effort to eliminate fossil fuel consumption in our country with EPA regulations, a ban on fracking, a moratorium on LNG, and the closure of the Keystone Pipeline, the Biden Administration has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidies for the transition to EVs and solar panels,” McCormick said. “Most of the solar panels and lithium batteries are made in China, and this crazy strategy from the radical environmental left has made us even more dependent on our greatest enemy. That’s the stupidity of the Biden Administration’s energy policy. It’s bad for our national security, our economy and our environment. We need pro-energy policies that open opportunity here in Pennsylvania.”
In an exclusive interview with Fox News, McCormick toured Bull Run Energy in Warren, Pennsylvania, on Friday. Co-founded by Justin Hansen and Sam Harvey, the duo has 19 employees and manages 1,400 wells, drilling and fracturing five to six wells a year. Most of the oil the company produces is used to make products like lipstick and other lubricants and household items.
“We’re a very small company,” Harvey told Fox News on Friday. “We have 21 employees, including myself and Justin. All of the shallow conventional operators in northwest Pennsylvania are small businesses, so we’re not big oil companies. We’re people’s companies trying to make a living. We’re very small businesses. It’s hard to make a living at this.”
Harvey pointed out the difficulties of a one-size-fits-all approach to energy regulation and advocated for expanding regulations to match the size and operations of oil and gas operations. Under the Biden-Harris administration, he said, a top-down approach doesn’t match the realities on the ground.
“We’ve had a lot of regulations handed down from the federal government over the last three or four years,” Harvey said, “that have trickled down to state governments and are finally starting to be enforced against us. What we’re seeing is that a lot of these regulations are designed for big oil companies that are drilling unconventional, deep horizontal wells. It seems like the people who wrote the regulations in Washington, D.C., have never actually inspected what these shallow conventional operations look like. Their language just doesn’t line up with what we’re doing here.”
Vice President Harris (Alison Joyce/AFP via Getty Images)
McCormick told Fox News he visited Bull Run Energy to see how small gas and oil operations operate in preparation for legislation he plans to implement on Pennsylvania’s energy economy.
“I want to make sure that I understand all of the issues related to our nation’s energy economy,” McCormick said, “so that when I become a senator, I can be a pro-energy senator who does all the things that need to be done to ensure that our energy sector thrives.”
Earlier this year, McCormick unveiled his “Keystone Agenda,” a policy platform that includes “Unlocking Energy for Pennsylvania,” which lays out a plan to eliminate Biden-era restrictions on gas and oil projects, embrace “all” energy production and leverage America’s natural resources to build energy independence and national security.
“Pennsylvania is blessed with the fourth-largest natural gas reserves in the world,” McCormick added. “We cannot access natural gas and get it into the hands of consumers in the U.S. and around the world. This is key. Pennsylvania’s senators should fight for these issues. Bob Casey has been weak on every front, advocating for increased regulation and ultimately the end of fossil fuels. This is bad for Pennsylvanians and bad for America.”
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Casey’s campaign responded by highlighting the senator’s commitment to “responsible fracking” and his voting record against banning fracking.
President Biden (Fox News)
“David McCormick is fighting back hard because Pennsylvanians see him for who he is: a Connecticut hedge fund billionaire who lied about where he lives, supported a dangerous abortion ban, built up the Chinese military and invested millions in China’s largest fentanyl manufacturer,” a Casey campaign spokesperson told Fox News. “Meanwhile, Bob Casey supports fracking and is actually doing good for our state by holding greedy corporations accountable, lowering costs and supporting our veterans and seniors.”
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“This race and this election is about a fundamentally different world view and how we move our country forward. How do we get an economy that works for workers, how do we secure our border, how do we strengthen our energy sector so we’re an energy powerhouse? That’s the Biden-Harris-Casey choice. Right now the top candidates are Harris-Casey versus McCormick-Trump. A fundamentally different world view,” McCormick told Fox News on Friday.
