The news release from Shell Chemical announcing that it has chosen a site in western Pennsylvania for a giant ethane cracker plant reached my in box at 12:48 Thursday afternoon.
Seven minutes later, a release from the West Virginia Federation of Young Republicans arrived. “Tomblin botches cracker plant,” read the headline.
By 1:37 p.m., I had an advisory from the Bill Maloney campaign saying a statement from the Republican Gubernatorial candidate was on its way, but the Maloney official planted this seed: “Earl Ray Tomblin has failed to achieve his #1 goal.”
At 3:22 p.m., Maloney was out with his statement: “This administration has done nothing to fix the fundamental problems that job creators face in West Virginia, but unfortunately West Virginia families continue to pay the price for the failures of the career politicians, special interests, and lobbyists in Charleston.”
Clearly, Maloney and the Republicans believe they have found themselves an issue.
Efforts by the Tomblin Administration to land the multi-billion dollar investment were well documented… perhaps too well documented considering the end result.
The press followed closely the progress of the bill providing a tax break for the cracker. Media also reported in detail Tomblin’s trip to Houston to meet with Shell officials. Press-friendly Commerce Secretary Keith Burdette was willing to talk with media, even when he didn’t have much, if anything, new to report.
Inevitably, expectations were raised.
I got the feeling a few weeks ago that Tomblin’s people were trying to bring those expectations down a couple notches. It was suggested that West Virginia could have some site specific issues that were difficult to resolve, and that notion was confirmed by Tomblin Thursday when he said the Hancock County site just wasn’t big enough.
“They needed around 500 acres and the site they were looking at in West Virginia was more in the 250-acre range and they were going to have to buy additional property,” Tomblin said.
Meanwhile, Burdette’s mantra over the last several weeks was that if the cracker were in Ohio or Pennsylvania, the project was so big that West Virginia would still benefit.
Still, the bell had been rung, so when Shell announced that West Virginia was NOT the pick, the news was disappointing for West Virginia and potentially politically damaging for Tomblin.
If West Virginia landed the facility, it would have been hailed as a major victory for the state and the Tomblin Administration. Tomblin might have been able to ride the cracker announcement to re-election this year.
But by the same token, now that the plant is going to Pennsylvania, Tomblin’s critics can paint it as a significant defeat.
I suspect, as Tomblin said, Shell’s decision has more to do with site issues than the state’s business climate or how hard Tomblin worked the deal, but the fact remains the cracker isn’t coming here.
This is how Maloney characterized it in his release: “For months, Earl Ray Tomblin has said that this was his number one priority as Governor. Well, he failed.”
It looks like Maloney has a sound bite for his future campaign speeches. It’s not as incendiary as his comment earlier this week that the Tomblin Administration and the Legislature would “pull down our pants to get a cracker,” but it may have more staying power over the course of a long campaign.