Note: The choice of Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as the Republican vice presidential candidate could make Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s race for reelection tougher by raising the enthusiasm of the state’s Republican voters. Brown is ahead in the polls, but if you can afford it, I urge you to contribute to his campaign. Keeping our Senate majority is essential.]
Let me preface this by saying that what Sen. J.D. Vance really believes about anything is uncertain given his flip-flops on major matters ranging from whether climate change is real to whether the guy who picked him as his running mate is “America’s Hitler.” His stance of no-abortions-no exceptions-in-any-state-even-for-raped-10-year-olds makes it seem as if he’s jockeying to be Commander Fred Waterford of Gilead instead of vice president of the U.S.
Despite that hardline attitude, like so many elected Republicans these days, Vance has no moral compass but lets his keen sense of unprincipled opportunism guide his public utterances and behavior. This convenient flexibility has clearly served him well in the current circumstances, erasing the past headlines and videos of him flaying Donald Trump, who has made him his partner on the campaign trail even though many Republicans think that is a mistake.
Trump mostly cares about the retribution he hopes to begin bringing down on his enemies Day One. He can be counted on to carry out his grudges: “My motto is: Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.”
You can also be sure he has never read one word of the prescriptions in Project 2025 even though his name appears on the manifesto’s pages 312 times. Just because he won’t read it, however, doesn’t mean he won’t deliver bad policy. He’s adept at that. We suffered four years of it with him in office, along with his legacy of appointing three lying reactionaries on the Supreme Court who, together with the two appointed by the Bush I and II, will keep afflicting us for years with their dismantling of decades of jurisprudence, which included the expansion of rights they are determined to scuttle.
However, Trump has demonstrated that his implementation of the proposals in the Project is likely to be haphazard and scattergun, though still, of course, perilous to democracy and destructive of the commonweal. Unlike Trump, however, Vance will check out all 922 pages of the manifesto, if he hasn’t already done so. And, despite his finger-to-the-wind shiftiness when it suits him, Vance has shown he is perfectly willing not only to drink the MAGA Kool-Aid but mix up some new batches of his own.
He obviously is a Trump toadie. But he also appears to see himself as the MAGA future. Trump apparently just sees him as someone he won’t have to suggest deserves a noose for refusing to follow unconstitutional orders the way Mike Pence did. And since, actuarially speaking, a reelected Trump has a 20%-30% likelihood of dying in office, which could make Vance the youngest president ever, his presence on the ticket is at least as deeply disturbing as the return of the Orange Menace himself.
There has been a growing amount of reporting spotlighting Vance’s alignment on a variety of issues, just about all of them head shakers. Today, I am sticking to some bullet points on his views regarding the environment, energy, and climate.
BIG Oil, BIG BUCKS
But, first, a note about money. Since 2019, Vance has received $312,932 from the oil and gas industry in campaign contributions. According to the campaign finance watchdog website OpenSecrets.org, that was more than all but 18 other members of Congress. Mike Chadsey, spokesperson for the Ohio Oil and Gas Association, told EnergyWire that Vance is “somebody who understands kind of what we do and how we do it.” No kidding.
• Just as he was temporarily a Never Trumper, Vance once believed said there was a “climate problem.” And then he switched. Now, in spite of overwhelming scientific assessment, the Senator has questioned the role of humans and fossil fuels in global heating. “I’m skeptical of the idea that climate change is caused purely by man,” Vance told the American Leadership Forum during his Senate race, as he groveled for Trump’s endorsement.
• Vance has attacked Biden’s signature 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, saying it “is mostly a lot of green energy stuff. And I think it’s made our economy less energy independent. It’s also added a lot of costs out there and a lot of federal spending that’s forced the inflation prices. And I also think that it’s sort of hastening a transition away from things like the gas-driven cars that most Americans don’t want. So I think there’s a lot of bad policy in there. Also a lot of inflationary policy in there. And I’d like to see a lot of it gotten rid of.”
Intent on showing he means it, last year he introduced a bill to get rid of the federal tax credit for electric vehicles. Titled the “Drive American Act,” S. 2962 would instead offer tax credits for U.S.-made vehicles powered only by gasoline or diesel.
• In an August guest opinion column in Ohio’s Marietta Times, Vance promoted the state’s oil and gas resources, saying “The Biden administration is doing everything it can to subsidize alternative energy sources and demonize our nation’s most reliable sources of power.” This whining at a time when the United States produces more oil and gas than it or any other nation has ever dolne in history.
• He loves hydraulic fracking, which injects sand, water, and toxic chemicals into layers of shale to pry out otherwise unreachable oil and gas. “Ohioans are lucky to live on top of the Utica Shale oil and gas basin,” Vance wrote in his Marietta Times op-ed. “New technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have allowed us to unleash these abundant natural resources.” Also unleashed is extensive groundwater pollution.
Vance Smash
• Vance has co-sponsored legislation to undo an Environmental Protection Agency rule setting strict emissions standards for cars and light trucks. He also seeks to repeal an IRA program focused on curtailing leaks of methane, which makes up 25% of the heat being trapped by all greenhouse gases.
• No surprise that the Senator is no friend of environmental, social and governance investing, which he labels “a massive racket to enrich Wall Street and enrich the financial sector of the country, at the expense of the industries that actually employ a lot of Ohio’s workers for middle-class jobs.”
• In 2023, he co-sponsored the “Power Act,” S. 319. This would require the president to obtain congressional approval before delaying leasing or permitting for oil, gas ,and mining on federal lands.
• He also co-sponsored the “STOVE Act,” S. 244. This would stop federal agencies from issuing bans on gas stoves and other gas-fired appliances.
• Vance has opposed numerous EPA regulations. These include those limiting gasoline-powered generators and methylene chloride, a paint stripper chemical linked to cancer.
Megan Jacobs, a spokesperson for the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund, told Politico, “Unfortunately all we can expect from J.D. Vance is the same mix of extreme rhetoric and Big Oil talking points we already hear from Trump. The policies he and Trump support could result in the loss of thousands of clean energy jobs.”
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