Memo: In Key Races, Focus on Big Oil Greed Helped Democrats Win

TO: Interested Parties

FROM: STOP

DATE: Wednesday, Nov 9, 2022

SUBJECT: In Key Races, Focus on Big Oil Greed Helped Democrats Win

As election results continue to roll in, one story already stands out: candidates who emphatically called for cracking down on Big Oil profiteering won their races. 

In the critical Pennsylvania Senate race, Senator-elect John Fetterman defeated his opponent with a strong, consistent message about oil and gas CEO greed and the GOP “simps” in Congress who enable it. Fetterman effectively painted his opponent as a wealthy ally of the same powerful interests who kept gas prices high while capturing record-breaking profits on the backs of working people. 

Fetterman also repeatedly called for a windfall profits tax that would provide real relief for Pennsylvanians; a key policy that Democrats should continue to fight for in the lameduck. That Fetterman won on this message in a major gas producing state underscores just how powerful it was and will continue to be for Democrats. In the weeks leading up to the election, President Biden helped Democrats by ramping up the messaging on oil and gas company greed and finally threatening a windfall profits tax.

Fellow Pennsylvanian Josh Shapiro won the gubernatorial race by over 10 points and throughout his campaign consistently drew a sharp distinction between the Democrats and Republicans on energy costs. “Last year, the CEOs of big, public energy companies took home over $20 million,” Governor-elect Shapiro tweeted earlier this year. “We don't need to give them more money. But that's what Republicans’ plan would do. My plan would put money directly in your pockets — not the big oil CEOs’.

In New Hampshire, Senator Maggie Hassan overwhelmingly won re-election after calling for oil and gas CEOs to be held accountable for the pain Americans were feeling at the pump, and labeling her opponent as a “rubber stamp for Big Oil”. Senator Hassan further called for investing in clean energy as the solution to free Americans from energy price gouging: “I’m holding Big Oil accountable and working to build a clean energy economy that isn’t reliant on fossil fuels.”

In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer won re-election, handily beating back spending by Canadian energy giant Enbridge over the Line 5 fight while Massachusetts governor-elect Maura Healey won following high profile litigation efforts against Exxon’s climate lies as attorney general. In similar bad news for big oil and gas price gougers, Attorney General Tish James won re-election in New York.

These victories shouldn’t come as a surprise. All year long, inflation and the cost-of-living crisis registered as the top concern among the American electorate – an electorate that demanded accountability for profit-hungry CEOs gouging prices and making life harder. Like Fetterman, Shapiro, Hassan, Whitmer, and Healey, winning Democrats were able to tap into this popular energy and connect this crisis to its true culprits: massive corporate greed, led by oil and gas CEOs who saw the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine as an opportunity to constrain supply, keep prices high, and rake in the profits. 

Polls throughout the year showed significant support for bringing Big Oil profiteering to heel. As far back as March, 80 percent of voters supported a windfall profits tax. In July, a poll showed that three in five Americans agreed that big oil and gas company CEOs are using the pandemic and war in Ukraine as an excuse to raise prices. And in the weeks before the election, veteran pollsters found that ​​“excessive profit-taking by energy and oil companies” ranked just below “high global oil and gas prices” and “disruption to supply chains due to pandemic” as things voters see as responsible for the cost-of-living crisis.

What’s Next? 

The cost-of-living crisis remains a top concern for a majority of Americans. Winter is coming, as are sky high prices for home heating. There’s every reason to assume that Big Oil’s fourth quarter profits will similarly be in the tens of billions of dollars, making 2022 their most profitable year ever while working Americans struggle to pay their bills. 

With control of Congress appearing to be split, President Biden and Senate Democrats need to go on (and stay on) offense. First, Democrats need to prioritize passing a windfall profits tax during the lameduck and provide relief to Americans concerned with home heating costs. Second, they need to continue to point the finger at the true culprits who are driving up energy costs: Big Oil CEOs. The House Oversight Committee should continue its hearings into fossil fuel industry disinformation and Congress should look for additional opportunities to investigate Big Oil price gouging and profiteering.

Meanwhile, the Republican game plan if they take the House is clear: in order to protect their corporate allies including Big Oil, they intend to launch numerous distractions: blame inflation and high prices on climate action, essential social spending like Social Security and Medicare, and anything else they and their wealthy corporate allies don’t like while holding the debt ceiling hostage to introduce cuts that will hurt working Americans even more. At the same time, the gas industry and the GOP are conspiring to launch spurious oversight investigations of the Energy Department in an effort to derail implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Their target? IRA provisions that would actually help Americans reduce their energy bills and improve health outcomes by transitioning away from gas. 

Alongside a windfall profits tax that provides direct and immediate relief to Americans, Democrats should forcefully call for and secure additional investment for an equitable, just energy transition. When oil and gas prices are outrageously high due to blatant profit-seeking by oil and gas company CEOs, it is the right time to double down on the clean energy transition. As one recent survey of the electorate found: 

Critically, with the high price for a gallon of gas, fossil fuels are now seen as a high-cost option produced by companies reviled by the country. So, when we ask, “which one is the right approach to oil and energy companies during the energy crisis?” the dominant response by far (40 percent) was “use the profits to invest in clean energy to get faster shift away from higher-cost fossil fuels.”

Democrats need to cut through Republican misinformation and keep public outrage trained on the true culprits of the cost-of-living crisis: big oil and gas companies determined to keep their profits high and Americans hooked to their toxic product. As the midterm election results suggest, Democrats can win by finding ways to reduce energy bills for the American people by passing a windfall profits tax in the lameduck, and defending hard-won provisions of the IRA that promise real, long-term energy savings for all Americans.