Gas Prices vs The 2012 Elections: Its A Huge Factor!

Gas prices fuel congressional campaign rhetoric


President Barack Obama isn’t the only candidate who has to worry about gasoline price spikes.

Take a look at members of Congress and their challengers, who are going all out to express concern about the plight of American motorists — often with personal stories of their own sticker shock.

Illinois GOP Rep. Bobby Schilling took a page from that playbook this month when he invited reporters to watch him fork over a C-note to fill up his Chevy Suburban at a Phillips 66 U-Save Mart in Moline. So did Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), who opened a recent weekly e-newsletter by bemoaning her last $58 pit stop.

Others are content just to empathize.

Hence, Republican Jason Plummer — running to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Costello (D-Ill.) — visited ConocoPhillips's Wood River refinery outside St. Louis to slam EPA policies that he blamed for driving up fuel prices. New York GOP Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle’s YouTube moment came when she gave explicit instructions on what she wanted Energy Secretary Steven Chu to tell his administration colleagues: "The American people are hurting. They need you to do something now."

Expect to hear lots of the same until November.

"This train stretches from New York City to Los Angeles with how many people have jumped on it," said Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst at Gasbuddy.com., a fuel price tracking website. “Either you are for low gas prices or you are going to get voted out of office. Everyone running is forced to talk about it because the other party is."

There's good reason for all the gas pump bickering. A Gallup poll in March found that 65 percent of Americans think Congress and the president can take actions to control gas prices, and that 85 percent want "immediate actions to try to control the rising price of gas."

Blame is also easy to spread around. Senate Democrats tried to put Republicans on the spot in March with a floor vote to repeal oil subsidies, while House Republicans see rewards from a legislative agenda heavy on domestic drilling and embarrassing the Obama administration on the Keystone XL pipeline.

“I’m certain that with $4 gas, the American people will remember who listened to them and who didn’t,” House Speaker John Boehner said in May before passing one in a series of energy bills.

During last year’s price spikes, freshmen fanned out to meet with voters and hear their complaints about fuel costs. Wisconsin GOP Rep. Reid Ribble's visit to an Appleton gas station made local TV newscasts, as did Republican Rep. Robert Hurt's stop with Virginia farmers, where he talked up offshore development and alternative energy.

The House websites for Ribble, Scott Rigell (R-Va.) and Indiana GOP Rep. Larry Bucshon all feature gas price surveys asking people to vote on policy solutions.

Indicative of this year’s political stakes, Senate Republican candidates hoping to help their party reclaim the majority are being much more aggressive than their House counterparts with their attacks on Democrats.

Virginia Republicans, for example, have posted a video picking at the opening line of a response from Democrat Tim Kaine at a town hall event when asked about gas price spikes. "I've got to admit there's some aspects about the gas price thing that makes me scratch my head," Kaine says in the clip — a comment his campaign says was taken out of context.

Kaine’s likely opponent, former Republican Sen. George Allen, is also up with a website that allows visitors to type in their car's make and model to see how much more it costs to fill up their tank compared with when Obama came into office.

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein's long-shot Republican opponent Elizabeth Emken features a “#FeinsteinOnEmpty” hashtag on her website. She also questions Feinstein's past praise for Chu, who said in 2008 — before joining the Obama administration — that he supported Europe-style gas prices in the United States.

Democrats are in on the action too.

Indiana Democrats are squeezing Sen. Richard Lugar with a Web ad slamming the Republican over his support for a gas tax hike of $1 or more.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) sent an email to voters in February talking up legislation he has co-sponsored that would curb oil market speculators.

He also solicited voters’ ideas on "what else you think we could do to bring down gas prices."

Sen. Claire McCaskill’s website tries to bust what she lists as six myths about gas prices (No. 5: “Nothing can be done to bring down the price of fuel”). The Missouri Democrat also promotes her call for Obama to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the second time during his term.

Democratic candidates for House seats are also going after Republican incumbents' campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, pairing them with votes against repealing the industry’s subsidies.

Nearly identical press releases came out in late February from New Hampshire Democratic candidate Annie Kuster, who is challenging Republican Rep. Charlie Bass; Nevada state Assembly Speaker John Oceguera in his race against Rep. Joe Heck; former New York Rep. Dan Maffei in his rematch against Buerkle; and Manan Trivedi in his second attempt to unseat Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.).

"High gas prices? You can thank Washington insiders influencing Washington insiders," Trivedi posted on Twitter, where he linked to a statement criticizing Gerlach for supporting oil and gas subsidies while taking more than $132,000 in campaign contributions from the industry.

Outside groups are also weighing in on the gas price debate.

Public Campaign, a group with ties to MoveOn.org and labor unions, sponsored two weeks of cable TV ads against Republican Rep. Scott Tipton in his Western Colorado district, knocking him for taking more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry and questioning his vote against repealing the industry's subsidies.

The American Petroleum Institute has already spent generously this cycle, mostly to help Republicans, including House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), Science Chairman Ralph Hall (R-Texas), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Boehner. The trade group also ran radio and print ads ahead of the Senate subsidy debate in the Senate and presidential battleground states of Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Karl Rove's American Crossroads is also going after vulnerable House and Senate Democrats, including $1.5 million spent so far challenging McCaskill. The attacks include a website called "The Truth About Claire" that questions her commitment to lowering gas prices.

Spokesman Nate Hodson said the group "won't be shy" when spending tens of millions more this cycle to raise the gas price issue in congressional races. "It's what voters are paying attention to right now," he said.



Sources: CBS News, Politico