STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Michel Martin and I are both in Pennsylvania this week listening to voters in a vital state. And some of those voters have experience that is relevant to the issues of the campaign. It can be hard to understand why some people vote as they do, especially if they vote differently than you do, but their jobs offer clues. And that was certainly true for a man we drove to see in the hills outside Pittsburgh.
Little wood frame house with a Trump flag and an American flag, Trump signs by the side of the road.
The signs were on our way to our destination.
Penneco.
HJ MAI, BYLINE: Yeah, that's the company. This is the wastewater disposal facility.
INSKEEP: Our editor, H.J. Mai, drove us to this bit of the fracking industry. The drilling technique uses high-pressure water to break oil and gas out of underground rock. Dirty water comes back up with the fuel, and trucks bring that wastewater here for disposal.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK HISSING)
INSKEEP: The driver hooks up a hose...
(SOUNDBITE OF METAL CLINKING)
INSKEEP: The water is filtered, and then powerful pumps plunge it to a final resting place 1,900 feet underground. This facility is where we met Ben Wallace of Penneco.
BEN WALLACE: So you are in ground zero of the Marcellus Shale boom. You know, some of the most prolific wells in the United States of America are within 10 miles of this site.
INSKEEP: You spot the derricks as you drive around, although this region is mostly fields and forest.
WALLACE: This is kind of an argument I give to environmental activists all the time - show me the industry. You know, you are in the Saudi Arabia of natural gas right now. You are standing here, and you don't see the industry anywhere.
INSKEEP: Wallace has complicated views of his industry's safety. Due to new regulations in recent years, frackers can no longer just dump the salty wastewater into a creek. And Wallace takes pride in the double-lined pipes and the fail-safe switches that shut down the operation at any sign of trouble. Yet he's also exasperated by residents and activists who frequently protest and sue.
WALLACE: When we started 40 years ago, 50 years ago, the process of getting a well permit was about a one-page application.
INSKEEP: Today, he says, it's hundreds of pages.
WALLACE: And the permit for this facility, probably a quarter million dollars.
INSKEEP: Why do you think people get so upset about this particular business?
WALLACE: It's scary. It's unknown. It's the boogeyman.
INSKEEP: Is it also, part of it, climate change? They just don't want you to be doing this business at all because of climate change?
WALLACE: I don't accept the notion of man-made climate change.
INSKEEP: His rejection of the scientific consensus on climate puts Wallace in line with much of the Republican Party. Wallace insists he does not vote on oil and gas but on what he considers American ideals.
WALLACE: The right of self-determination. The right to be a Christian nation. The right to determine your own outcome. The right to be free of government interference.
INSKEEP: But it's fair to say that his politics are consistent with his work. And he's running a political action committee that has raised money for billboards supporting Donald Trump. Kamala Harris, like Trump, says she doesn't oppose fracking. Although Wallace believes that in the many details of regulation, his candidate would be more supportive.
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INSKEEP: We met another voter in a Pittsburgh area bakery. She said to come to Oakmont, just a few minutes away from the fracking wells but politically very different. Kamala Harris signs are much more numerous here. Amid the cakes and doughnuts that seem to be the size of your head, we ordered coffee.
You think that's your mocha?
ROSE FAUST: Might be. I don't know.
INSKEEP: OK. Here we go.
Rose Faust (ph) says she spent close to 20 years in a factory that makes ceramics.
FAUST: Ceramic insulator that is in appliances or, say, your car. There's tiny pieces that go inside of gas ovens.
INSKEEP: And how did you get into this line of work?
FAUST: Oh, well, personally, I got a divorce and needed a full-time job instead of staying home and being a full-time mom.
INSKEEP: Mass producing ceramics is not an easy job.
FAUST: I worked on the kiln for years until my body could not take it anymore, but that's lifting and loading the parts to go into the kiln and then come out is how I started. That's when I started there. I needed the money, so I'd work weekends. And that's where the money was at because you're getting paid time and a half.
INSKEEP: How hot is it in that room?
FAUST: It gets probably around 110 degrees.
INSKEEP: Eventually, from the heavy work, she needed surgery on both elbows. And that's one way her work life intersects with her politics. She supports unions and had a union job with health insurance, though it's getting more expensive.
FAUST: They paid all of our health insurance, and then it went south after that. They started adding it onto our contracts where we pay a certain portion of it. Now it's pretty much out of control like everywhere else.
INSKEEP: Though she finally had to stop working at the ceramics plant, she says she lasted long enough to get all three of her girls through college. And now she has a job leading the union that used to represent her. This time of year, that means she's engaged with a lot of politics, knocking on doors of union members to encourage them to vote.
FAUST: The best part for me, I think, is talking to the older people. The people that are retired seem to have more common sense (laughter).
INSKEEP: What do you mean by that?
FAUST: They take their union and their retirement and everything seriously. They'll say, hey, we're Democrat no matter what. Like, we know how we got our jobs. We know who, you know, took care of us all these years. And pensions, I think, are the biggest thing.
INSKEEP: Faust reminds her fellow union members that President Biden signed a law designed to protect their pensions. And it only passed the Senate when Vice President Harris cast a tie-breaking vote.
What do you think about Harris?
FAUST: I think she can bring peace back to this country, I hope. I mean, I just - because I see so much division.
INSKEEP: How do you feel about the direction of the country right now?
FAUST: It's definitely scary.
INSKEEP: Faust says some union voters dismiss her door-to-door sales pitch. Some support Trump and talk about the dangers of immigrants and asylum-seekers, which Rose Faust says she doesn't understand.
FAUST: Well, all they're trying to do is escape war and what they're going through and want better for themselves. Isn't that what we all want? But people want to turn them all away.
INSKEEP: She feels sympathy because of her experience. She was born to a troubled family and says she spent most of her childhood in foster care.
FAUST: I would open my home to anybody. Somebody opened their home to me years and years ago (laughter). And had that not happened, where would I have been? I could've been on the street, too. And you can't call somebody a thief or a murderer unless they actually did something.
INSKEEP: Sometimes she doubts the people she meets are drawing on their experience.
FAUST: Because you'll hear somebody, and they're repeating the exact same thing that you've heard on a commercial. And it's like, you need to stop watching Fox News or something, you know? But I can't say that. I'm there to listen.
INSKEEP: To listen and share her own experience in hopes of persuading her neighbors when she can. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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