The oil and gas industry’s investment in Sen. J.D. Vance seems to be paying off. Vance has championed fracking and railed against clean energy since joining the Senate in 2023, after a campaign partly bankrolled by fossil fuel companies, write Heather Richards, Mike Soraghan and Brian Dabbs. Now, the Ohio Republican is a vice presidential candidate, joining Donald Trump in his calls to “drill, baby, drill.” Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate could help the former president’s prospects in Pennsylvania, a swing state that is one of the country’s largest energy producers. His home state of Ohio has similarly gained economically from the fracking boom, benefiting the oil and petrochemical industries. Vance is "somebody who understands kind of what we do and how we do it,” Ohio Oil and Gas Association spokesperson Mike Chadsey told POLITICO’s E&E News. “He's gonna continue to be an advocate for the industry, and energy investment, helping make sure that those issues stay at the forefront,” Chadsey said. But Vance wasn’t always a stalwart supporter of oil and gas — or Trump. Vance once used words like “Hilter” and “idiot” to describe Trump. And as recently as 2020, he spoke at Ohio State University about society’s “climate problem” and said using natural gas as a power source “isn’t exactly the sort of thing that’s gonna take us to a clean energy future." Vance’s climate and energy views took a 180 once he was running for the Senate. The oil and gas industry spent more than $283,000 on Vance’s 2022 campaign — more than they gave to all but 18 other members of Congress, according to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets. In the years since, Vance has said that he doesn’t think there is a climate crisis and questioned how much human activity contributes to global warming. His legislative record reflects his shift to fossil fuel ally. He sponsored a bill that would require the president to seek congressional approval before delaying oil and gas leasing, and his Drive America Act would swap the climate law’s electric vehicle tax credits with ones for gasoline- and diesel-powered cars. Say no, take the dough? Vance has said that he would like to get rid of much of the Inflation Reduction Act. But President Joe Biden’s landmark 2022 climate law has benefited Vance’s home state — and even companies that he holds a stake in, write Scott Waldman and Corbin Hiar. The law, for example, provided $500 million to repower a steel plant with cleaner energy in Middletown, Ohio — Vance’s hometown, whose economic challenges he chronicles in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.” And the private equity firm Vance co-founded backs a nuclear engineering startup, X-energy, that received millions of dollars from a subsidy program expanded in the Inflation Reduction Act. Vance also has multiple green investments in his portfolio, despite once calling environmental, social and governance investing a “massive racket to enrich Wall Street.” His broad range of holdings includes not only up to $100,000 in an oil-focused mutual fund and $250,000 in an energy-intensive cryptocurrency, but also investments in an energy storage developer, an EV-charging service provider and a gardening company.
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