Democrats’ climate law set off a wave of energy projects in GOP districts.
While Republicans on the campaign trail and in Congress regularly bash the law — which Biden signed a year ago Wednesday — as big-government overreach by Democrats bent on killing off fossil fuels, its benefits are disproportionately landing in their communities. And as the measure supercharges efforts to combat climate change, it’s also rekindling economies where people have felt forgotten, potentially softening how some voters view Biden as he seeks reelection.
People think that these projects are benefitting China. How are Democrats going to change this perception?
MICHIGAN: Green Charter Township and Marshall
Jim Chapman, the Republican supervisor for Green Charter Township, a small rural community an hour’s drive north of Grand Rapids, said he’s received several death threats over a planned $2.36 billion battery component manufacturing facility in the area.
“I accepted the fact that I was going to have to be the lightning rod,” Chapman said in an interview from his office. He is facing a recall effort launched by residents worried about the plant’s sponsor, Gotion, and its links to China.
Chuck Thelen, the vice president of North American manufacturing at Gotion, has insisted there is no such language in the U.S.-based company’s articles of incorporation. Thelen said the Chinese Communist Party has no presence in the North American company.
“The rumors that you’ve heard about us bringing communism to North America are just flat-out fear-mongering and really have nothing based in reality,” he said.
The plant’s backers say the opposition represents just a small minority of residents and argue it will bring much-needed economic growth.
“We desperately need good-paying jobs,” said Carlleen Rose, 69, a local business owner.
OKLAHOMA: Inola and Oklahoma City
Bill McAnally, a self-declared “Trump fan,” was ecstatic when an Italian company, Enel, announced plans in May to spend more than $1 billion — the largest private investment in the state’s history — to build a solar cell and panel manufacturing facility a half-hour drive east of Tulsa.
He owns a diner that is one of the few restaurants around Inola, a town home to 1,500 people, and stands to see sales jump from the influx of new customers.
“It’s a great deal,” said McAnally, 68, since Enel, through its affiliate 3Sun USA, expects to generate 1,000 manufacturing jobs in 2025. “All it does is help my business.”
But when told by a reporter that Enel plans to take advantage of tax credits included in Biden’s climate law, McAnally abruptly changed his tune.
“I don’t support it now,” he said. “The federal government doesn’t need to get involved. We all support bringing in green, but we don’t want to give them all this free money.”
But Oklahoma’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, has no qualms about the IRA incentives that are attracting multinational companies to his state.
“Obviously some of these incentives from the federal government are causing people to look into the U.S. market,” Stitt said in an interview in the state capitol.
Republicans voted against the IRA. Then they claimed credit for bringing the benefits to their districts. How are Democrats going to take the credit for economic improvements in red states?
NEW YORK: Kingston
The Hudson Valley has been waiting for an industrial reboot for almost 30 years. And now that Biden’s climate law is offering some flicker of hope, some Republicans are lining up to claim some bit of credit.
Having seen the economic engine of the region empty out 7,000 jobs a generation ago, both Democrats and Republicans support bringing the new project to Ulster County.
GOP Rep. Marc Molinaro, who represents the county, acknowledged the federal program is an “exceptionally important tool” in helping draw Zinc8 — despite his joining most Republicans in voting for legislation that would’ve repealed many of the climate law’s clean energy incentives.
Democrats have to prove LOCALLY to voters in red states that’s it’s Democrats working to improve their lives, not Republicans!
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Jen Psaki calls out Republicans that took credit for the IRA after they decried the Biden legislation. Psaki says, "As much as Republicans decry Biden’s legislation, their communities are all largely benefitting. That’s how good legislation is supposed to work. It helps everyone. Even the ones who try to take credit after attempting to tank its success."
Democrats have to prove LOCALLY to voters in red states that’s it’s Republicans working to ruin their lives, not Democrats!
Republican-controlled states have escalated their offensive against Democratic-controlled cities and counties this year to unprecedented heights, further deepening the trench between red and blue America.
This surge of state preemption began with aggressive efforts by Republican governors to override local public health rules during the coronavirus pandemic, but in this year’s legislative session it has spread to cover a panoramic range of issues. GOP-run states have reversed local decisions on everything from voting rules to police funding levels, from policies on homelessness and energy to zoning and fees on developers. In Key West’s case, the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature even overturned a local ballot initiative barring giant cruise ships from docking in the small community.
In all the states most aggressively overriding local decisions, Republicans who have gained control of state government largely through their dominance of smaller places are using that leverage to countermand the decisions of larger metro areas that are trending away from them politically, even as they grow more dominant in driving their states’ economic growth and innovation.
But under pressure from Republican then-President Donald Trump to reopen the economy as quickly and widely as possible, Republican governors – particularly Sun Belt chief executives like Ron DeSantis in Florida, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Greg Abbott in Texas and Doug Ducey in Arizona – repeatedly overrode decisions by big-city, mostly Democratic mayors to lock down their communities, limit hours that businesses could operate and fine those who did not wear masks in public.
Can local Democrats show the small town republican voters how Republican policies were killing their relatives?
Particularly since Trump’s election in 2016, Democrats have solidified their strength in virtually all of the nation’s major metropolitan areas.
Simultaneously, Republicans have consolidated their hold over small-town and rural America; beyond the largest 100, Trump in 2020 again won about 2,550 of the nation’s remaining 3,000 counties, according to the tally by the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.
“I don’t think cities have found an effective way to fight back politically except by having the Democratic coalition do better at the state level,” Briffault says. “You have to elect governors who would veto some of these things.”
I am in the process of working with my local state representatives to see if we can improve the situation in my state.