The staunchly GOP-aligned oil industry that championed George W. Bush and Mitt Romney isn’t yet willing to embrace Donald Trump — and some of its lobbyists wonder if they could stomach seeing Hillary Clinton in the White House instead.

It’s yet another sign of how Trump’s unconventional campaign and bombastic rhetoric have upended many of the traditional assumptions of presidential politics. For oil and gas supporters, the industry’s traditional allegiance to the Republican Party is bumping up against the GOP front-runner’s support for ethanol, his puzzling remarks about grabbing “a chunk” of the Keystone XL pipeline and his attacks on oil as just another “special interest.”


Among those expressing uncertainty is the industry's top lobbyist, American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard, who told POLITICO this month that he doesn't know whom he will vote for in November.

"It's probably premature for me to judge," said Gerard, a former Bush campaign bundler who in 2012 was widely viewed as a potential White House chief of staff or energy secretary if Romney won.

Another oil industry source was even blunter about the prospects of a match-up between Clinton, who promises to crack down on oil and gas pollution, and Trump, who has accused Republican rival Ted Cruz of being "totally controlled by the oil companies."

"Is there a Door Number Three?" the source asked by email.

None of this may translate into outright industry support for Clinton, especially given the leftward lurch she has taken while working to assuage suspicious green activists and fend off a Democratic primary challenge from Bernie Sanders. But some oil and gas representatives say they may be resigned to Clinton winning in November, allowing the Republican Party to mount a strong comeback four years later.

"It might be better to have four years of Clinton and try again in 2020," Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna said.

Stephen Brown, a vice president at the refining company Tesoro, said the choice "comes down to which risky bet are you willing to take."

"Is Hillary really more centrist on traditional energy issues than she is posturing on the campaign trail or is Trump more substantive on these same issues than he has telegraphed thus far?" Brown asked. "And can Republican incumbent senators running in blue states sufficiently present themselves as a check on a Democratic White House enough to win if Trump is tanking?"

Traditionally, the oil industry could hardly be more allied with the GOP — in the last two election cycles, for instance, Gerard’s group gave about 80 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates. Gerard has personally donated more than $75,000 to candidates in the past decade, nearly all of which went to Republicans.

But Trump’s comments about energy policy have largely avoided detailed proposals, and his rhetoric on the trail has often raised huge eyebrows among petroleum backers.

In Iowa, Trump pledged to corn growers that he will promote ethanol, irking oil refiners who say the plant-based biofuel drives up their costs. He assures sportsmen that he will protect the federal lands where they hunt and fish, raising worries among energy companies that he might block oil and gas development. And while he supports approving Keystone, the Canadian-backed effort to transport Alberta’s oil to the Texas Gulf Coast, he pledged to make a deal in which “we get a chunk of it” — so that “a lot of the money they make is going to come back to the people of this country.”

The courts would probably invalidate any attempt to impose a profit-sharing deal on the pipeline, and oil lobbyists don’t take all of Trump’s comments that seriously. "I don't think he cares" about the details of the ethanol fight, one says.

But more to the point, Trump has offered few solid clues about what his energy policies would look like. And his unpredictability is an overarching concern for an industry in which regulatory certainty is a top priority.

So while Trump has dismissed the idea that the government should take action on climate, for example, that does little to reassure the industry that he would have its back when decision time arrives.

“Would he take a carbon tax as part of a tax reform deal? Of course, because he cares about tax reform," said McKenna, the Republican energy lobbyist. "You start asking yourself policy questions, ‘Would he do X?’ The answer is usually yes."

Gerard said much about Trump’s energy philosophy is still a mystery. "The question on Mr. Trump’s side is, 'How do you feel about energy generally?' He hasn't talked about it a lot.”

And when he has talked about it, Trump has used the oil industry as a cudgel to attack his rivals. In multiple debates, he derided Ohio Gov. John Kasich's economic record as a lucky result of the fact that his state "struck oil." He attacked Cruz as an enemy of Iowa's corn growers because of his opposition to a congressionally created mandate that requires refiners to blend biofuels into the gasoline supply.

"I'm not really blaming him because he's financed by oil people,” Trump said of Cruz during the Iowa caucuses, which the Texas senator won.

Trump has also broken with the industry on larger questions of environmental policy. He told Field & Stream magazine in January that "I don't like the idea" of returning federal land to the states, a contravention of conservative energy doctrine grave enough to prompt a rebuke from the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is supported by oil and gas companies among other business interests.

Still, most oil advocates are not exactly warming to Clinton. They worry about her recent calls to ban offshore drilling outside the Gulf of Mexico, as well as her pledge to regulate drilling so strictly that there will not "be many places in America where fracking will continue" — even if she doesn’t promise an all-out fracking ban, as Sanders does. Those stances are a switch from positions she took as secretary of state, when her department promoted fracking in foreign countries and she said the administration was “inclined” to approve Keystone.

But Gerard questioned whether Clinton would moderate her views if she secures the Democratic nomination — or if she would continue to repeat the "Bernie mantra" of keeping fossil fuels locked in the ground.

"Does she move to the center?" he asked. "That's where you win the election."

Industry-linked donors and oil patch voters have shown a clear preference for Cruz, who has received more than $800,000 in direct donations from oil and gas interests, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. But Clinton ranks next among the still-active presidential candidates, taking in about $250,000 directly from donors linked to the industry, followed by Kasich, who has received about $100,000.

Trump's contributions from oil- and gas-linked interests total about $9,000, the center says — less than the $15,000-plus that has gone to Sanders.

Three fossil-fuel titans who supported other Republican candidates — Jeb Bush backer T. Boone Pickens, Scott Walker booster Dan Eberhart and Cruz fan Toby Neugebauer — told POLITICO this month that they would support Trump in a matchup against Clinton. But it remains unclear whether they would back up their preference with donations.

“We won’t be donating to Trump, and I don’t know any of our donor peers that would donate,” Eberhart said to Reuters this week. “If he’s the nominee, we will support him in spirit but not in cash.”

Six of the top 10 oil-producing states have voted so far, and Cruz has won five of them: Texas, Alaska, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. In Louisiana, he and Trump secured an equal number of delegates.

But Cruz's path to the nomination is a narrow one that would require him to far outperform his polling in the remaining states, and it is mathematically impossible for Kasich, who has won only his home state of Ohio, to secure enough delegates, leaving a contested convention as his only opportunity.

Trump's campaign did not return a request for comment on his previous remarks on oil and gas-related issues. Nor did Clinton's campaign return a request for comment about the industry's reticence regarding a general election contest with Trump.

Some oil supporters still call the choice between parties a no-brainer. “Every Republican, when it comes to American resources, is going to be better for our economy" than a potential Democratic president, said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a close ally of his state's fossil-fuel producers. Either Clinton or Sanders would preside over significant job losses in drilling and mining, Barrasso predicted, and "we just can't allow that to happen."

Other fossil-fuel players appear ready to hope that Trump gets an education in their priorities.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy predicted that Trump's base, dominated by "disaffected, underemployed, blue-collar" voters disillusioned with President Barack Obama, would push him in the right direction on policies that benefit oil and gas.

"Reality is going to educate him," Cassidy said in a brief interview. "It educated Barack Obama, who came in opposing fracking — now, he's for fracking."

Nick Juliano contributed to this report.