Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at campaign rally in New Orleans. (Photo: Julie Dermansky)
Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders made their positions on fracking clear last weekend. Trump is all for it. Clinton too, but only if a list of conditions met. Sanders is against it.
Trump brought up fracking on Friday at a New Orleans campaign rally. “New York has been let down, they didn’t allow them to frack,” Trump said. “If they fracked in New York, New York would lower its taxes, would have no debt, would have made a fortune. Instead Pennsylvania took all their money.”
Praising Pennsylvania, Trump said, “They took those beautiful, beautiful natural resources. They took ’em out.” He failed to mention hundreds of reports of water contaminated by the Pennsylvania fracking industry.
His assessment was also out of step with Louisiana’s economic reality. While Louisiana’s fracking industry boomed for years before the recent downturn, the state is currently facing a budget shortfall that is close to a billion dollars.
Trump claimed he can win in New York. Upstate New Yorkers — deprived of exploiting the natural gas under their land due to the state’s fracking ban — love him. But New York’s fracking ban was passed as a result of popular support. His position is unlikely to gain him many votes.
And it probably failed to win him many votes in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana either, where there is an ongoing battle to stop fracking before it starts.
On Sunday, during the Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, the first question on fracking in any of the debates to date was raised. A member of the audience asked Clinton, “Do you support fracking?”
Clinton listed four conditions that must be met before she can support fracking. “I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it, number one. I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don’t…