You’ve probably noticed that Democrats are talking a lot less about climate change. But connecting clean energy to household bills proved to be a successful way to win voters in the elections across the US on Tuesday.
This off-year election was a pressure test of Democrats’ broad message on affordability and who voters hold accountable for the rising cost of electricity. Though President Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot, most Democratic and independent voters pin the blame for high prices in general on the president. And most voters do recognize that state and local officials help decide how much they pay on their utility bills.
The results showed that by grounding climate action in the everyday math of household energy bills, Democrats may have finally found a way to make climate policy feel less abstract — and more like a winning issue.
How state races leaned into the power play
In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, ran on a promise to fight skyrocketing energy bills. She even vowed to declare a state of emergency and freeze utility rates on day one in office. And it worked. Voters, who saw their household electricity bills rise by 20 percent this summer — compared to 11 percent across the US as a whole — trusted her to tackle the problem. Before the election, one poll showed that voters trusted Sherrill to do a better job of controlling energy prices than her opponent, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, by 10 points. On Tuesday, Sherrill won — beating her Republican opponent with 56 percent of the vote.
Tension in the Garden State had been brewing for a while, and Sherrill’s win reflected more than just frustration over bills — the state has also felt the impacts of Trump’s cuts to clean energy, leading to the cancellation of a major wind energy project and delays in building transmission infrastructure.
In Virginia, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger also made affordable energy a tentpole of her campaign against Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. Energy prices in Virginia haven’t risen as fast as New Jersey, but the state faces a different problem: a surge in power-hungry data centers. The state is home to the largest concentration of power-hungry data centers in the world, and 54 new data centers received permits in the state this year. The prospect of even more energy demand from data centers is already starting to drive up generation costs across PJM — the power grid that serves Virginia — and is generating public resistance. Spanberger seized on that tension — promising to keep household energy affordable while managing the data boom.
The Trump administration’s efforts to throttle renewable energy, boost fossil fuels, and get rid of environmental regulations will likely keep affordability in the spotlight into next year’s midterm elections.
But one of the more surprising results on Tuesday was a normally obscure election for two seats for the Georgia Public Service Commission. Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson defeated two incumbent Republicans on the five-member panel. This often-overlooked state office that regulates electricity prices in the Peach State managed to draw more than 1.5 million voters in an off-year election, a 21 percent turnout, and gained national attention.
“Who sits in these chairs is deeply important to how states are navigating these big questions that affect folks’ lives,” said Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy, an energy analysis firm. “It is just a huge sign that Georgians are fed up with rate hikes. They’re fed up with high bills and ready for a public service commission leadership that takes navigating the clean energy transition and household finances deeply seriously.”
All states have a public service commission whose job it is to regulate utilities, but in 10 states, including Georgia, those commissioners are elected rather than appointed. Private power companies are often monopolies, so these commissions serve as a check on how much money these companies can spend, what they buy, and, crucially, how much of their expenses they can pass onto customers. For years, Georgia’s commission has been accused of giving the state’s main power company too much leeway. In 2023, the commission approved a plan to pass more than $7 billion in cost overruns for the construction of two nuclear reactors onto Georgian customers — a move that pushed monthly bills higher across the state.
“What we’ve seen is the public service commission has basically rubber-stamped whatever plan the power company has put out and then whatever proposal they’ve asked to pay for it,” said Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters.
So Democrats campaigned and won on controlling rising energy costs. The big question now is, can they deliver?
There’s no guarantee they’ll be able to roll back prices — energy costs are driven by everything from aging infrastructure to volatile fuel markets — but the wins in Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia share a common theme: voters are demanding action on power bills.
And those victories, McCorkle said, show that a promise to address energy prices and promote clean energy can be a winning combination, even in an off-year election for an arcane state office, if the message connects.
In the primary elections for Georgia’s commissioners this cycle, there was a county where just eight people showed up to vote. But advocates like McCorkle launched a statewide campaign to connect the dots between the commission and affordable power, and to rally votes. “There was a lot of organic content that popped up as people started to understand and had that light bulb moment where they said, ‘Oh wow, these people matter because they are the ones who are making decisions about my power bill and I can go vote in this race,’” McCorkle said.
Energy prices are unlikely to come down anytime soon, and the Trump administration’s efforts to throttle renewable energy, boost fossil fuels, and get rid of environmental regulations will likely keep affordability in the spotlight into next year’s midterm elections.
For Democrats, the worries over rising power bills might just become their best argument for their agenda to promote clean energy and rein in greenhouse gas emissions.