Perry hits campaign trail for Trump
Former Gov. Rick Perry on Sunday tore into Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden for calling for a transition away from fossil fuels and warned the state’s more than 400,000 oil and gas workers not to trust Biden’s statements on fracking.
Perry, President Donald Trump’s former energy secretary, told reporters that Biden’s energy plan would be “devastating” for oil and gas workers in Texas and Pennsylvania, where Perry is set to campaign later this week.
Biden’s “anti-energy plan would devastate Pennsylvania’s economy in particular, kill jobs, destroy American energy independence,” said Perry, who was governor of Texas from 2000 through 2015.
With Election Day just over a week away and polls showing a tight race in Texas, Trump and his campaign have tried to seize on Biden’s comments during the final presidential debate on Thursday in which he said the nation needs to transition away from oil.
During one exchange with Trump, Biden said, “Iwould transition from the oil industry, yes.”
That answer has caused a stir,
particularly in Pennsylvania, where Biden has tried for several days to explain that he’s not saying that would happen immediately. Biden’s energy plan calls for putting the United States on a path to zero emissions by 2050 but would not ban fracking in the immediate future.
“Eventually we’re going to have to (get rid of) oil, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels, but we’re not getting rid of fossil fuels for a long time,” Biden told reporters after the debate.
Perry said Biden can’t be trusted. He said Biden has called for banning fracking in front of more liberal audiences, but when he is in energy-producing states, he tries to assure people he’s not going to end it.
“That’s the biggest fraud that maybe we ever seen running for the presidency of the United States when it comes to the energy industry,” Perry said.
Biden has tried to clarify that he has called to ban fracking only on federal land.
The energy sector debate is one the Trump campaign has been trying to build on for more than a year. Even during the Democratic primary, Trump’s campaign blanketed Houston with ads warning that Democratic policies would be bad for the Texas oil and gas economy.
In July, Trump made the same case in Midland and Odessa .
In Texas, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, more than 428,000 Texans worked directly in the oil and gas industry, according to the Texas Oil and Gas Association. Just in Harris County, there were an estimated 125,000 workers directly in the industry.
But the pandemic has triggered the worst oil bust in decades and mass layoffs in the industry. More than 40,000 jobs have been cut, and the number of active rigs in the Permian Basin has dropped by about 70 percent.
Critics of the Trump administration say his mishandling of the pandemic plus the oil price war with Russia and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors to the bust.
“How much worse could the oile conomy be damaged than it’s already been damaged?” said former U.S. Rep. Steve Bartlett, a Texas Republican who is backing Biden’s campaign. “The oil economy is suffering from an oversupply and a lack of demand, and that’s under Donald Trump, frankly.”
Perry is not the only Texan stepping into the presidential race. Former Housing Secretary Julián Castro was campaigning in Colorado and Nevada over the weekend on behalf of Biden’s campaign.
“Donald Trump has failed America,” Castro said Sunday in Nevada. “We must make a change.”
Despite polls showing Biden ahead in Texas, Perry said he sees no reason for Trump to campaign in the state.
“The president doesn’t need to be in Texas,” Perry said. “He’s going to carry Texas, I think, rather handily.”
His comments come just days after Quinnipiac University released a poll of 3,300 likely voters that showed 48 percent supported Biden and 47 percent supported Trump. A Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler poll released on Sunday of 925 likely voters showed Biden with 48 percent to Trump’s 45 percent.