Energy Politics Proving Difficult to Master NYTimes.com

CHEYENNE WELLS, Colo. — The politics of energy are convoluted and volatile in Congressional campaigns across the United States this summer, as candidates search for a Goldilocks approach that is neither too hot nor too cold, and that voters will believe is sincere.

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Mayor Monte Baker of Cheyenne Wells sees a future in wind power, but says it will be 10 years before a wind farm is built.

In Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, Representative Lee Terry, a Republican, this week began airing an advertisement in which he points to the images of three Saudi officials and gruffly says, of rising gasoline prices, “these guys benefit.”

In Kansas’s Third Congressional District, Nick Jordan, a Republican, has a “Dennis Moore’s Vacation From Energy Solutions Clock” ticking away at the top of his Web site, referring to the Democratic incumbent there.

Here in Colorado, where Democrats gather next week for their convention, candidates have sparred relentlessly over energy. By most accounts, it is the No. 1 issue in the Fourth Congressional District, a mostly rural area that sprawls across Colorado’s boundary with the Great Plains.

In the small towns and wind-swept farms of the Fourth District, it is easy to find people like Rod Diekman. Mr. Diekman is outraged about the particulars of the energy crunch, including the prices for fuel and fertilizer that are battering his 3,500-acre wheat and millet farm just north of Cheyenne Wells, and the lack of electricity-transmission capacity that is blocking construction of a wind-turbine plant on his property.

But like many voters, Mr. Diekman also has plenty of scorn left over for the politicians.

“They’re all just saying what they think I want to hear,” said Mr. Diekman, 53, standing at the door to the repair shed where he rebuilds tractor-trailer rigs as a sideline to make ends meet.

The fierce tactical positioning of candidates here and elsewhere — some call it pandering and waffling — is producing a convergence of sorts around the idea that more is better, that an expansion of energy production from all sources and places will somehow fix things, lower prices and restore stability to the economy.

“It’s a very fine line to walk,” said Betsy Markey, a Democrat who is challenging Representative Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican, here in the Fourth District.

Ms. Markey opposes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for example; Ms. Musgrave heads there this week to decide for herself. Both candidates support expansion of renewable energy like wind, but Ms. Markey says that Ms. Musgrave’s long record on the issue — voting against renewable energy standards in Congress as recently as last August and against tax credits for the wind industry this year — tells a different story.

In Minnesota — where the Republicans will gather for their convention next month — the race in the Sixth Congressional District also tells the tale of an energy-policy free-for-all that is challenging candidates and voters alike.

In the district, a traditionally conservative-leaning region that hugs the northern suburbs and exurbs of the Twin Cities, the positions of the major candidates on energy have begun to appear not so far apart. Each side seems to be stretching beyond ground traditionally staked out by its party, onto terrain long occupied by the opposing one.

Along the campaign trail, Representative Michele Bachmann, a Republican seeking a second term, emphasizes that she supports widening exploration for gas and oil in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (which she toured this summer, in addition to an oil rig in the Gulf Coast), but also speaks highly of renewable energy sources, like the solar shingles she saw in a laboratory.

Meanwhile, El Tinklenberg, Ms. Bachmann’s Democratic opponent, trumpets an alternative energy tour he took through the district in recent weeks — to a wind-turbine contractor, a waste-to-fuel plant, a group working to make algae into biodiesel, a park-and-ride lot — but also says he favors more domestic exploration for oil (though he stops short of expansion in the Arctic wildlife refuge).

Of this newly and awkwardly shared ground, each side expressed deep skepticism of the other. In both the Colorado and Minnesota races, the candidates say they want to look at all approaches in this moment of crisis, but doubt their opponents truly do.

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Kirk Johnson reported from Cheyenne Wells, and Monica Davey from Stillwater, Minn.

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