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.