The Kamala Harris Record On Fracking And Leasing Is Clear

“Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” Vice President Kamala Harris has taken to telling voters on the campaign trail in recent weeks. During her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier last week, Harris went further to distance herself from the sitting president, stating, “My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

But President Biden’s vice president is on the ballot, and her new spokesperson for energy and climate issues recently told an interviewer with Politico that, where banning hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking” - and other energy issues are concerned, Harris is playing from the Biden administration’s playbook.

“Just to be clear, Vice President Harris hasn’t said anything that the administration hasn’t already said” related to oil and gas to issues like banning fracking and leasing federal lands, Camila Thorndike, the Harris/Walz campaign’s new director of climate engagement told Politico Pro.

But, Thorndike says, Harris “is not promoting expansion” of drilling and fracking for oil and gas. Harris has repeatedly pointed to the fact that she did cast the deciding Senate vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022, and that the bill included language instructing the Interior Department (DOI) to comply with the Federal Lands Leasing Act to restart the leasing program it had kept in suspension despite several court orders to conduct sales. But Harris has remained mum about the fact that DOI has not acted on the IRA requirement, keeping its leasing program in de facto suspension since. As a result, no one really knows what the next four years would hold in a Kamala Harris presidency on this key issue.