Harris cites IRA impact to explain fracking reversal

Vice President Harris addressed her reversal on a fracking ban, which she supported during the 2020 Democratic primaries but has since come out against, in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Thursday night.

“As vice president, I did not ban fracking. As president, I will not ban fracking,” Harris told Bash in a joint interview with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

Bash followed up by citing Harris’s comments at a 2019 town hall in which she said “there’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” and asked why she had since changed her position.

“My values have not changed. I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far,” Harris answered. She went on to cite the recent boom in renewable energy jobs in the U.S., much of it in the wake of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, for which she cast the tiebreaking Senate vote.

“That tells me, from my experience as vice president, we can do it without banning fracking,” she said. “What I have seen is that we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”

Fracking, the process of extracting natural gas from bedrock by injecting pressurizing fluids, is a major employer in the southwest of Pennsylvania, which is likely to be a pivotal state in the November election.

The Harris campaign said she no longer supported a ban shortly after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee following President Biden’s exit from the race, but Harris’s comments to Bash are the most in-depth on the issue thus far from the candidate herself.

David McCormick, the Republican nominee to challenge Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) for his Senate seat in November, has frequently also sought to tie Casey to Harris’s previous support for a ban, but Casey has consistently polled ahead of McCormick both before and after Biden stepped aside.