Vice President Kamala Harris touts electric vehicle investment in St. Cloud visit

ST. CLOUD — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday heralded electric buses as a "model of American innovation" that help workers secure good-paying jobs and transit companies find more climate-friendly options.

The Democratic vice president toured bus manufacturer New Flyer in St. Cloud before giving a speech to a few hundred people, a mix of New Flyer employees and community members.

"Every day, millions of Americans ride the bus to go to work, to school, to church, to the grocery store — to wherever they need to get," Harris told the crowd. "America's buses get people where they need to go. They are essential, and they are in desperate need of upgrading. The majority of our nation's buses run on diesel fuel. Well, here's the thing: Diesel exhaust is a poison.

"But there is a solution to all of this — and that solution is parked right over there," she said, referring to three electric buses parked behind her that are ready to be shipped to Minneapolis, New York City and Rochester, N.Y.

New Flyer, a subsidiary of Winnipeg, Manitoba-based NFI Group Inc., is the largest heavy-duty transit bus manufacturer in North America. Its customers include Metro Transit as well as St. Cloud's Metro Bus, which started converting its fleet to compressed natural gas about a decade ago. St. Cloud was the first city in Minnesota to make the switch to compressed natural gas, which burns substantially cleaner than gasoline or diesel.

During the tour, Harris chatted with employees about their families and training as she looked at buses in three stages of the production process — a welded metal frame, a bus showing electric cords coiling through the body and providing energy to run it as well as USB outlets at each seat, and a finished vehicle in which Harris took a turn in the driver's seat.

Roxanne Moon, a 25-year employee at New Flyer, said she was excited for Harris to highlight the company. Moon described the St. Cloud facility as a start-to-finish plant that can crank out a street-ready bus in about two weeks. Right now, they are making about 12 a week, but they hope to make 20 a week by the end of the year, Moon said.

"It's going to put New Flyer on the map again," she said.

The bipartisan infrastructure law contains about $5.5 billion dedicated to electric transit buses. Minnesota is expected to receive more than $850 million over five years to improve public transit across the state.

Minnesota Republicans slammed Harris' visit to Minnesota, criticizing the Biden administration's electric vehicle push as a mandate while at the same time putting a moratorium on copper nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, materials used to build electric vehicles.

"On the campaign trail, the Biden administration, they committed to developing those minerals that go into electric vehicles here in America," said state Rep. Isaac Schultz, a Republican who represents communities surrounding St. Cloud. "They've failed in that promise."

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, who represents the Sixth District that includes St. Cloud, called the administration's green energy plans a "nightmare for Main Street America."

"Nothing better exemplifies this administration's incompetence and hypocrisy than trying to force Americans to buy $60,000 electric vehicles while simultaneously banning the Minnesota mineral projects needed to produce those EVs," Emmer said in a statement before Harris' visit.

There is no mandate that consumers must purchase electric vehicles, but buyers may quality for a clean vehicle tax credit. And while the Biden administration recently imposed a 20-year mining ban on 225,000 acres in northern Minnesota, the ban affects only one of three major proposed copper-nickel mines.

St. Cloud has emerged as a leader in renewable energy efforts within the last decade. The city's wastewater treatment plant is using waste from local food and beer manufacturers to create energy and fertilizer, and last year the wastewater facility was set to become the first in the world to produce hydrogen fuel and oxygen on-site.

Those energy initiatives and local companies such as New Flyer and electric car manufacturer Opus Motorcar Co. in neighboring St. Joseph make the region a natural place to highlight the president's economic agenda, said Patti Gartland, president of the Greater St. Cloud Development Corp.

"It is a great honor to have been selected for the visit — to have our community on their radar," Gartland said. "That puts us on a lot of other radars, and that's a really positive thing."

Harris last visited Minnesota in October to campaign for Democrats on abortion rights before the midterms.

She is the sixth vice president to visit St. Cloud while in office. The last vice presidential stop was in 2009 when Joe Biden visited New Flyer to promote his stimulus proposal.

Harris referenced Biden's visit in her speech — to the cheers of some New Flyer employees who also attended Biden's event — and said he praised the company's effort to make hybrid transit buses.

"Then-Vice President Biden said, and I'll quote, 'This company is an example of the future.' Well, a lot has changed in the past 14 years," she said. "But one thing has not. You are still an example of America's future."

Staff writer Briana Bierschbach contributed to this report.