Sorry, local Republicans, but higher gas prices aren’t the winning issue you think they are

Local Repub­li­cans and their allies work­ing at right wing think tanks have been on a tear these past few weeks about high gas prices, com­plain­ing about how Wash­ing­ton now has the high­est prices in the coun­try and try­ing to hang the blame for those increas­es on the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act and Demo­c­ra­t­ic elect­ed offi­cials, par­tic­u­lar­ly out­go­ing Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who isn’t seek­ing anoth­er term.

For exam­ple, the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus’ Twit­ter account — which is oper­at­ed as if it were the online bull­horn of a hyper­ac­tive polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee rather than the online pres­ence of a leg­isla­tive cau­cus — keeps pro­gram­mat­i­cal­ly post­ing tweets like this, often laden with stock photos:

Right wing oper­a­tives and intel­lec­tu­als have pitched or glad­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in sto­ries that seek to ascer­tain what’s caus­ing gas prices to go up, which have in turn inspired opin­ion pieces, like this Dan­ny West­neat col­umn from yes­ter­day.

Buried or even left unsaid in much of the cov­er­age is the truth of the mat­ter: Gas prices in Wash­ing­ton State have increased because obscene­ly prof­itable oil com­pa­nies have decid­ed to charge us more. Which is some­thing they were already doing even before the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act was implemented.

“What you pay at the gas pump is a prod­uct of many fac­tors: the glob­al trad­ing price of crude oil, mar­ket con­di­tions, pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty, trans­port costs, sub­si­dies, tax­es, oth­er poli­cies, and of course the oil industry’s own price manip­u­la­tions to max­i­mize prof­its,” Cli­mate Solu­tions explained last week.

“In a nut­shell, the more you pay at the pump, the more prof­it the oil indus­try makes. But there’s a lot more than that at stake for oil companies.”

“When it comes to sell­ing gas, the Pacif­ic North­west is the Unit­ed States oil industry’s cash cow. In Decem­ber 2022, oil retail­ers made 85.6 cents in prof­its for every gal­lon of gas sold in Wash­ing­ton. That made Wash­ing­ton the third-most prof­itable state in the coun­try for gas sales. In Ore­gon dur­ing the same peri­od, 95.3 cents per gal­lon was pure prof­it for the oil indus­try. That put the Beaver State in 2nd place for the indus­try’s most prof­itable state for gas sales.”

“With so much prof­it on the line, it’s no won­der the oil indus­try has come out swing­ing against cli­mate pro­tec­tion in Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton. The fos­sil fuel indus­try doesn’t care whether your air is breath­able in fifty years, they just want your mon­ey now. It’s true that efforts to reduce pol­lu­tion have com­pli­ance costs. How­ev­er, even if we assume that the oil indus­try pass­es 100% of those costs on to con­sumers, that’s still far less than the prof­its they’re rak­ing in.”

“What effec­tive cli­mate poli­cies do is expand access to clean­er, more afford­able ways to get around — things that threat­en the oil industry’s near-monop­oly, which makes it hard­er for them to con­tin­ue bring­ing in extreme profits.”

“Jack up gas prices, rake in huge prof­its, then blame envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies and ignore the monop­o­lis­tic forces at play. That’s the oil indus­try playbook.”

It’s also a play­book that local Repub­li­cans feel offers them polit­i­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties. They’re out of pow­er in Wash­ing­ton State, and while they’ve con­tin­ued to lose big for sev­er­al con­sec­u­tive cycles, there’s always anoth­er elec­tion over the horizon.

And so they play the blame game.

Not only is it fun for Repub­li­cans to attack Democ­rats over high gas prices, it gives them a chance to suck up to some of their key fun­ders. Their friends in the oil indus­try just love the tweets you see above, because com­mu­ni­ca­tions cam­paigns like this help obscure who’s real­ly respon­si­ble for the price increases.

You won’t find any tweets from local Repub­li­cans or right wing think tanks like the Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter crit­i­ciz­ing big oil com­pa­nies over high gas prices. Not a one. You will see plen­ty of calls to repeal the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act, though.

Repub­li­cans seem to be cal­cu­lat­ing that once Wash­ing­to­ni­ans are frus­trat­ed enough with high gas prices, pub­lic sup­port for poli­cies like the Cli­mate Com­mit­ment Act will evap­o­rate. They seem con­vinced in the poten­tial for high gas prices to be an amaz­ing win­ning wedge issue that will help them politically.

How­ev­er, our research sug­gests they are wrong.

About a year ago, when Repub­li­cans were try­ing to exploit high­er gas prices as an issue to dri­ve their desired “red wave” in the midterms, we decid­ed to ask a sam­ple of like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers whether they sup­port­ed cli­mate poli­cies — even if it meant hav­ing to pay more for gaso­line and home heat­ing fuel (which we tacked on for good mea­sure). We found that a firm major­i­ty said yes.

Take a look:

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose, or strong­ly oppose the adop­tion of laws in Wash­ing­ton State that aggres­sive­ly respond to the threat of cli­mate dam­age, such as restric­tions on air and water pol­lu­tion, even if that means pay­ing more for gaso­line and home heat­ing fuel?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 55% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 42%
  • Some­what sup­port: 13%
• Oppose: 39%
  • Some­what oppose: 12%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 27%
• Not sure: 6%

This data is from a sur­vey of 1,039 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers that field­ed Wednes­day, June 1st through Thurs­day, June 2nd, 2022.

Again, that’s June of 2022 — not this month.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.0% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

More infor­ma­tion about the survey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

As explained above, cli­mate poli­cies are not what’s caus­ing high­er gas prices.

But even if many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans buy into the right wing mis­in­for­ma­tion that is cir­cu­lat­ing, that’s not going to cause pub­lic opin­ion to turn against cli­mate action poli­cies. In par­tic­u­lar, sub­ur­ban vot­ers aren’t going to start vot­ing for Repub­li­cans in 2024 because they have buy­er’s remorse about Democ­rats pass­ing cli­mate action laws. Sor­ry, Repub­li­cans — this cam­paign won’t yield polit­i­cal gold for you.

We’ve been ask­ing vot­ers whether they sup­port invest­ing in com­bat­ing cli­mate dam­age for almost ten years, and we have con­sis­tent­ly found sup­port­ive majori­ties — typ­i­cal­ly between 55% and 58% — in sur­vey after sur­vey, year after year. The results above are con­sis­tent with what we’d expect to see in response to a ques­tion ask­ing whether peo­ple sup­port cap and invest, or a pol­lu­tion tax.

It says a lot about Wash­ing­to­ni­ans that they remain sup­port­ive of tak­ing cli­mate action even if a con­se­quence is high­er gas prices and home heat­ing costs.

We are a state that is a nation­al leader in envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, in all areas — from reduc­ing waste to valu­ing trees to fight­ing pol­lu­tion to con­serv­ing our remain­ing wild and majes­tic places. We are not a pushover for the oil indus­try, which hap­pens to oper­ate a bunch of refiner­ies on the shores of our Sal­ish Sea.

We should respond to price goug­ing in a way the oil com­pa­nies will under­stand: by propos­ing and explor­ing more ideas to secure a just and accel­er­at­ed tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels to a new ener­gy econ­o­my, like a wind­fall prof­its tax.