Mark Fleming has a prediction for those terrified about the impact of a second Trump administration on the clean energy transition: “It’s going to work out better than folks think.”

Fleming is head of Conservatives for Clean Energy, a Raleigh-based nonprofit that brings together lobbyists, consultants, and politicians on the right who support clean energy. The group formed a decade ago, not long before Trump’s first term began, and is now active in six Southeast states. On Tuesday, together with the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy, it held its biennial luncheon in downtown Raleigh. 

Coming just two weeks after an election most advocates see as a major setback for federal clean energy policy, the Raleigh event was not unlike past affairs, with congenial vibes, a half dozen awards to politicians and businesses, and presentation from leading Republican consultants assessing the political salience of clean energy.

“It was an election about the economy and immigration,” explained Paul Shumaker, one such pollster and a fixture at these gatherings. “Clean energy is never going to be the issue.”

Trump and his hostile, mostly fact-free rants on the campaign trail about wind energy and the climate crisis got little mention during the formal presentations. Side conversations showed conservatives seemed relatively unconcerned about the future president’s tirades and threats.

“Governing is different than campaigning,” Fleming said. 

He and others believe much of Trump’s rhetoric was tossed as red meat to his base of supporters and won’t get meaningful follow-through. On technologies such as offshore wind — which the incoming president frequently lambasts — perhaps the administration and even the man himself can be convinced of its economic benefits, attendees suggested. 

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who supports offshore wind in the commonwealth, “will be at the top of the list of conservative policy makers in terms of encouraging the Trump administration to look at the positives on offshore wind,” Fleming said. “It makes long term economic sense, but there’s going to be some education there.”

Indeed, to help his re-election chances, Trump did flip his stance on offshore drilling four years ago — at least for the Southern Atlantic — after input from Republicans in Southeast states who oppose the practice.

Despite Trump’s vague promise to curtail the Inflation Reduction Act, Fleming believes congressional Republicans will preserve most of Biden’s signature climate law because of its benefits in rural areas.

Nine new projects announced in North Carolina the year after the measure’s passage, from lithium processing to vehicle-charging equipment plants, will spur tens of thousands of jobs and add $10 billion to the state’s GDP, the clean economy group E2 found.

Such data should be fodder for members of Congress like Sen. Thom Tillis, North Carolina’s senior U.S. senator and a Republican, to fight to keep most of the Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions.

“He has been such a thoughtful leader on energy issues,” Fleming said of Tillis. “He’s going to be a key decision maker in the U.S. Senate on these clean energy issues moving forward.” 

‘We won’t agree on everything’ 

Jason Saine, a Lincoln County Republican who served more than a dozen years in the North Carolina House and now works as a lobbyist, was among the luncheon’s awardees. He says Trump’s rhetoric is just part of politics. 

“Good science and good facts will rule the day, but in the meantime, we’ll suffer through a lot of rhetoric,” he said.

Like some of his conservative colleagues who focus on federal policy, Fleming hopes the closely divided Congress will have new reason to enact reforms to the permitting process that will speed approval of clean energy as well as fossil fuel projects.

And though he’s confident that much of the Inflation Reduction Act will survive, Fleming believes Congress will trim it — a “scalpel rather than a sledgehammer” approach. 

Saine agrees. “It can always be recreated in a different format and voted on again,” he said. “What’s dead today is never dead tomorrow.”

One item in the climate law that’s ripe for repeal is the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles, Fleming said. That incentive is spurring plenty of economic development in rural areas in the form of EV and battery factories, but it’s perceived as benefiting only urban folk. 

“The administration will want wins,” Fleming insisted. “We won’t agree on everything. But I think we’ll have opportunities to work together to move the economy forward and move the clean energy cause forward in D.C.”

No matter what, most of the luncheon attendees remained focused on incremental reforms in North Carolina — where the power dynamics are largely unchanged after Nov. 5. Trump won the state, but Democrat Josh Stein trounced a scandal-plagued Republican to win the governor’s race. The GOP continues to control a heavily gerrymandered legislature and is just one vote shy of a veto-proof majority in the House. 

Still, as “Trump II” approaches, Fleming acknowledged Conservatives for Clean Energy has an important role to play.

“It’s going to be better than folks think,” he repeated. “But the onus will be on all of us to make it happen. Now, groups like ours are more needed than ever. That thought leadership on these issues will be on the right. It’s not going to be from our friends on the left.”

In North Carolina, conservative clean energy supporters don’t think Trump will follow through on threats is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.

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Kamala Harris announced Tuesday morning that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is her vice presidential running mate, bringing her campaign up many notches in rural credibility.

Walz grew up in Valentine, Nebraska (population 2,700), on his family’s farm before moving to the even smaller town of Butte, Nebraska (population 300), his sophomore year of high school, graduating in a class of 25 students.

After high school, he joined the National Guard and worked in manufacturing before attending Nebraska’s Chadron State College for a degree in social science education. He taught and coached high school football in Alliance, Nebraska (population 8,000), where he met his future wife, Minnesota-born Gwen Whipple. They married in 1994 and moved to Mankato, Minnesota (population 45,000), in 1996. Walz taught geography and coached football at Mankato West High School, where he also headed the school’s first gay-straight alliance.

In 2006, he ran for Congress as the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party nominee (a third party unique to Minnesota whose platform centers “progressive agrarian reform” and advocates for farmers, union workers, and the public ownership of utilities, railroads, and natural resources, as well as social security legislation, according to their website.) He won the disproportionately rural first congressional district of southern Minnesota, beating the district’s six-term Republican incumbent. He represented the district from 2007-2019 before becoming governor of Minnesota.

All this to say: Walz knows rural America.

Unlike many other Democrats, Walz understands what it’s like to be from a small town where no matter your political ideology, neighbors still look out for one another. He’s privy to political nuance in rural communities, like in the congressional district that voted for him and also voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Walz doesn’t hold the same disdain for or condescension of rural folks or Trump supporters that some Democrats are guilty of (Hillary Clinton’s 2016 “basket of deplorables” comment about Trump supporters is the most famous example of this).

This last point is what I find most compelling about him. Walz doesn’t think Trump supporters are dumb or are voting against their own interests; he thinks that Democrats have a messaging problem. In an interview with Ezra Klein, he harkened back to his teaching days to describe this issue.

“The schoolteacher in me keeps thinking, if I give a test, and 90% of the students fail, I can guarantee you it’s not because the kids aren’t smart, there’s something wrong with the test or the way I’m teaching it,” Walz told Klein. “I keep coming back to this: if they’re not voting for us, there’s not something wrong with them, there’s something [about Democrats’ messaging] that’s not quite clicking.”

Since it was first announced Walz was being considered for the V.P. pick, he’s developed his own way of talking about the threat of another Trump presidency by keeping it simple: Republicans are just plain-ole “weird.”

Before Walz hit mainstream media, Democrats were warning of the “existential threat to democracy” that Trump poses, but now they’ve united around Walz’s phrasing. Republicans who want to take books away, to be in your medical exam room – they’re weird for that.

This messaging is refreshing in its simplicity. The way Walz uses “weird” isn’t to shame Trump supporters; it’s to point out how odd Republican policies like book bans or abortion bans really are. Isn’t it counter to personal freedom – one of the fundamental values in the United States – to dictate what a person can and cannot read? Isn’t it a terrible privacy infraction to want a say in the healthcare people receive? Can’t we all just respect each other’s personal freedoms and mind our own business, Walz asks?

As Minnesota governor, Walz has passed an impressive number of progressive policies. Some of his signature accomplishments include investments in public education like free breakfast and lunch for all students, expansion of the state’s child tax credit, protections for reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare, a $1 billion investment in affordable housing and expanded voting rights access, to name just a few.

But he’s got critics, too. His governor’s campaign ran on a “One Minnesota” message meant to bridge the state’s rural-urban divide, but some Minnesota pundits say once he was armed with a Democratic trifecta in the governor’s office and in both chambers of the state legislature, his “One Minnesota” message changed.

“But once he got that trifecta, his message shifted to: ‘This is what we can do with single party control, the era of gridlock is over,’” said Hamline University professor David Schultz in a CNN interview. Other pundits have wondered whether he’ll be able to rekindle the unity that message spurred if the Harris-Walz ticket loses in November.

Even with these critiques, Walz seems to be a strong choice for the Harris campaign.

He hits many of the demographic factors Harris’ advisers were looking for, whether officially or not: He’s a white, rural, middle-age veteran who has won over the internet through a single word. And the power of the internet is nothing to scoff at – one of this summer’s it-girls, musician Charli XCX, declared Kamala Harris a “brat” (a counter-intuitive compliment that references Charli XCX’s hit album), and enthusiasm for Harris soared among young millennials and Gen Z. Capitalizing on Walz’s internet virality is a good strategy for getting young voters.

Pair that with Walz’s rural credibility (he recently said he could out-shoot Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance in a pheasant hunt), and the Harris-Walz ticket could be a force to be reckoned with.

The post Minnesota Governor Tim Walz Gives Harris Campaign Rural Cred appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

(RNS) — If elected, Walz would be either the first or second Lutheran vice president of the United States, depending on how you count it.

The post Five faith facts about Harris pick Tim Walz, a ‘Minnesota Lutheran’ Dad appeared first on Religion News Service.