Today Northup held a news conference next to a Thornton's station on Dixie Highway in Louisville. The price on the station's sign read $4.07. And Northup was saying that price would drop immediately if the democratic controlled congress, including 3rd District Congressman John Yarmuth, would vote to life the ban on oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge and on parts of the U.S. coastline. Northup admits that the oil wouldn't start coming out of the ground for a decade or so but says it would be a signal to oil producing countries that the U.S. is serious about coming up with its own energy sources.

Yarmuth responds by saying he opposes drilling in ANWR and doesn't think lifting the ban on drilling there would have any significant impact on gas prices. He says the democratic congress' push to tax oil company profits, pester oil companies to drill on land they already lease and stop the flow of excess oil into the petroleum reserve are short term solutions to rising gas prices. And he claims the current congress is the first to look at long term alternative energy sources. Northup says that's not true.

Whatever the case, it's obvious the high gas prices are going to be the number one issue for republicans this fall. The problem they've got is that many of their campaigns have been funded by oil companies and their executives. Northup took over $300,000 in contributions from them during her years in Congress. Voters understand GOP candidates aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them. But voters also understand that America has billions of barrels of oil in the ground that it's chosen not to access. And according to polls I've seen, the public favors drilling in those areas.

But one U-K energy specialist told state legislators in Frankfort last week that the campaign rhetoric from both parties is misleading. He says the rising price of gasoline is being fueled almost exclusively by worldwide demand. He added that oil company profits are no greater, percentage wise, than most American companies. And even if ANWR and off shore points are eventually open to drilling, they'd only produce a total of about 2 million barrels of oil per day, not enough to keep up with the United States' increasing demand (we use about 20 million barrels a day right now, about 8 million from domestic sources.)