Democrats Just Realized They Have a Winning Climate Message

Not only are the impacts of climate change ever more obvious
over the past year—last week alone two
people died in floods in New York City, while a new
report estimates extreme heat kills one person per minute worldwide—but
increasingly, Americans are struggling to pay our energy bills. Nearly one-quarter of adults in the U.S. cannot pay their power bills, according to 2024
census data. As noted in an October study by Public Grids, an organization that
advocates for public power, that was before massive data center growth and the
Republican-led evisceration of the Inflation Reduction Act, which had some
provisions for making renewable energy more affordable for homeowners and
renters.

In New Jersey, one of the most important gubernatorial races
in the country, the victorious Democrat, Mikie Sherrill,
touted offshore wind while campaigning against Jack Ciattarelli, a Trump-endorsed
enemy of all turbine construction. She put energy affordability at the
heart of her campaign, vowing to freeze utility rates,
“massively build out cheaper and cleaner” power generation, regulate energy
companies far more tightly, and sue the Trump administration to allow New
Jersey to expand its renewables sector. It wasn’t just part of her platform;
she talked about it all the time, spending
a quarter of her ad money on the issue. With New Jersey residents facing a
22 percent increase in their electricity costs, energy
affordability was central to the election, and Sherrill’s approach
prevailed. It also helped that the New
Jersey League of Conservation Voters spent $1.7 million attacking her
opponent on this issue.

Similarly, Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic gubernatorial
winner in Virginia—who, like Sherrill, is generally regarded as a centrist
Democrat—ran
ads in which she talked about energy affordability; promised to make data
centers pay their fair share of energy costs; and said she’d build out solar,
wind, and nuclear power. In Georgia, in a relatively obscure race for seats on the state’s Public Service
Commission, two
Democrats prevailed over Republicans by touting renewable energy and curbs on
data center development, the first Democratic victory in Georgia in a
nonfederal statewide election in almost 20 years. In another
lower-profile but important win, in Pennsylvania, three
Democratic state Supreme Court justices kept their seats, preserving a
Democratic majority on the court as it considers an important climate case,
on
the legality of Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s carbon credit program.