Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday launched a $10 million promotional blitz targeting 16 House democrats who face a tough fight for re-election in this year’s midterm elections.
He also urges the United States to increase its own production of fossil fuels, accusing the president of Joe Biden about the “dramatic” increase in the country’s dependence on Russian oil and gas as its authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin moving forward with an unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine.
This fueled rumors that the former vice president is applying for the White House in 2024.
“To get the United States back on the path to energy independence, we need Congress to stand up to Putin and stand up for American energy,” Pence said in a statement from his political advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom, which backs the ad campaign.
“It’s time for President Biden to demonstrate America’s strength by restarting the Keystone pipeline, restoring oil and natural gas leases, and imposing sanctions and embargoes on all oil and gas exports from Russia.”
The 30-second ad contains quotes from various media outlets that blame Biden’s climate agenda for the sky-high prices Americans are seeing at gas stations today.
It’s also littered with images of the fighting in Ukraine, even blurry photos of civilians lying dead in the street.
Pence’s publicity blitz on Monday, targeting Biden and vulnerable Democrats, is the latest hint that he may be considering a White House bid in 2024, following a speech that indirectly criticized GOP kingmaker Donald Trump just a few days ago.
“Before Russian bombs rained down on Ukraine. Before hundreds of innocent Ukrainians died. A terrible decision has already been made,” says the voice-over over the terrible images.
“Joe Biden caved in to radical environmentalists and shut down the US Keystone pipeline, dramatically increasing American dependence on Russian oil, jeopardizing America’s security and helping Russia finance their invasion.”
It ends with a call to the viewer to urge their local member of Congress to “support the security of America, not the terror of Russia.”
The publicity blitz targets 16 Democrats from 11 states, including four from Texas and three from Pennsylvania. Both states are among the top energy producers in the country.
They are Rep. Colin Allred (TX-32); Rep. Cindy Exn (IA-03); Rep. Jared Golden (ME-02); Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX-28); Rep. Kurt Schroeder (OR-05); Representative Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07); Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (TX-15); Rep. Chrissy Hulahan (PA-06); Rep. Susan Wild (PA-07); Rep. Josh Gotteimer (NJ-05); Rep. Matt Cartwright (PA-08); Rep. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09); Representative Tom O’Halleran (AZ-02); Rep. Elaine Luria (VA-02); Rep. Sharis Davids (KS-03); and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (NM-03).
Pence last raised questions about his potential presidential ambitions just two days ago when he spoke Friday at a Republican donor meeting in New Orleans.
The 30-second commercial contains snippets of media quotes that depict the US’s increasingly horrendous reliance on Russian oil and gas.
It is riddled with footage of the devastation in Ukraine that Putin’s forces have perpetrated.
The advertisement directly targets Biden and accuses him of making concessions to “radical environmentalists.”
It targets 16 House Democrats in 11 states, including seven members from Texas and Pennsylvania, two of the largest US energy producers.
During his speech, the former vice president reportedly criticized his old boss Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories about rigging the 2020 election, saying of the midterms that “we can’t win by fighting yesterday’s battles or suing the past again.”
His Monday ad campaign demanding that Biden reopen America’s Keystone XL oil pipeline echoed similar calls from other prominent Republican figures.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused turmoil in global oil and gas markets. Russia is among the world’s leading producers of oil and natural gas and is the number one exporter of crude oil to the world market.
Last week, South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott told Fox News that Biden’s decision to revoke a pipeline permit was “disastrous.”
“The prices we see today reflect his decisions a year ago, not the conflict that started a few days ago,” Scott said.
South Dakota Gov. Christy Noem, also nominated as a possible GOP candidate in 2024, told the same outlet after Putin launched his attack that Biden gave him “all the power” to do so by cutting off the pipeline.
But White House officials and Biden administration allies argue that the Keystone XL pipeline will have little to no immediate impact, that it will take time to ramp up production and that it will have dire environmental consequences.
The US is also not particularly dependent on Russian oil, they note. In 2020, approximately 7 percent of US liquid fuel imports came from Russia, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
But as Democrats and Republicans grapple with how to mitigate the impact of the war with Russia on domestic gas prices, states on the east and west coasts are seeing price spikes on top of pre-existing inflation problems.
The average nationwide cost per gallon of gasoline as of Monday is $4.06, according to the AAA, which has not been seen since 2008.
That’s 45 cents more than last week and a whopping $1.30 more than a year earlier.
In New York State, gas prices average $4.26 a gallon, just short of AAA’s 2008 record high of $4.30. In Manhattan, the average price rises to $4.57 a gallon.
The average gas price in California is a staggering $5.34 per gallon, the highest average price ever recorded by the AAA.