WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton ducked a crucial issue Tuesday, saying she won’t take a position on the Keystone Pipeline until she’s in the White House.
“If it’s undecided when I become president, I will answer your question,” she told a New Hampshire voter who wanted to know her “yes or no” position on the issue.
Clinton noted that she had first started the process of evaluating the controversial pipeline to bring oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to refineries in the southern United States while she was secretary of state.
Critics accused her of punting on the issue then, and Clinton didn’t appear any more eager to take on environmentalists Tuesday at a town hall event in Nashua, NH.
“This is President Obama’s decision, and I am not going to second-guess him,” she said.
Clinton also said she didn’t want to interfere with her successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, whose agency must sign off on the pipeline.
Obama has also avoided taking a direct position on the issue, which is backed by some labor unions and is a rallying cry for Republicans who say the project will create thousands of new jobs.
Clinton’s Democratic opponents, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, both oppose the pipeline.