Is the Neil Chatterjee, the ebullient Republican chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission contemplating a run for the GOP nomination for governor in Virginia in a 2021 election? He appears to be making tentative steps in that direction, but is leaving lots of ways to exit the room.
On May 16, Chatterjee posted on his Facebook account, “Hypothetical: Draft Neil Chatterjee for Virginia Governor 2021.” He quickly got a number of positive responses. But when asked about the posting, he told E&E News, “It’s amazing that people are taking this seriously. But knowing D.C., you can never just joke around.” He is a Kentucky native and former long-time staffer for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which is why he ended up at FERC. But he has lived in northern Virginia for over 20 years.
Chatterjee’s response to E&E’s query was coy. “I have spent basically my entire professional career in public service. So when my term is up at the commission, continuing to serve the public in some way would certainly be something I would consider. But that could take many forms beyond simply running for office.”
He told Politico, “My focus from now until June 30, 2021, is on my duties at FERC. Only after my term is complete will I start to give any thought to what I do next in life.”
Timing would pose a problem for Chatterjee. The Virginia gubernatorial primary is June 8. He would have to step down from the energy commission well ahead of that to mount a political campaign, or face a clear violation of the federal Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees, even agency political appointees, from participating in partisan politics.
Virginia holds its gubernatorial elections in odd-numbered years. The governor is limited to only one four-year term (although a former governor could run for a non-consecutive term, as former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been said to be considering). Virginia’s oddball political schedule, as explained in the excellent 1968 book by J. Harvie Wilkinson, “Harry Byrd and the Changing Face of Virginia Politics,” is a direct result of the late former Virginia governor Harry F. Byrd (1887-1966).
Byrd led the dominant Virginia Democratic party for 40 years. It was known, quite correctly, as the Byrd machine. A social conservative and racist, Byrd established the off-year elections and one-term limit to insulate the state party from the more liberal national party and to make sure he, not a popular governor, held the political reins in the state.
A long-time Republican operative in the Old Dominion told The Quad Report, “Neil who? I’ve never heard of the guy. As best I can tell, he’s never played any role in state Republican politics. He’s lived in the bluest region of the state, and he was wearing a Washington Nationals baseball cap in the picture on his Facebook account.”
In FERC’s meeting today, the commission authorized a natural gas LNG terminal to export some 20 million metric tons annually of North Slope gas on the Kenai Peninsula. The project includes an 800-mile pipeline to move the gas to the facility. The Department of Energy earlier authorized the exports.
The commission also approved a “refined” policy on allowed return on equity for investor-owned electric utilities and said in a “policy statement” the new policy would generally apply to natural gas and oil pipelines.
On Wednesday, the commission said it will hold a remote technical conference July 8-9 to “consider the ongoing, serious impact that the emergency conditions caused by covid-19 are having on various segments of the United States’ energy industry.” The commission said it and its staff have “already taken multiple steps to provide the public and regulated entities with regulatory relief in the short-term, the commission now wants to explore the potential longer-term impacts” on the industries it regulates.
— Kennedy Maize