Key races in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia made it clear that energy affordability was on the ballot this Election Day as Democrats who campaigned on the issue swept the field.
Candidates in the three states campaigned on tackling rising energy costs through renewables, such as wind and solar, or by supporting the Trump administration in promoting fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal.
Trump has said that ramping up the production of fossil fuels will “unleash American energy” and save taxpayers money. But residential electric bills have increased about 10% nationwide this year — from 15.9 cents per kilowatt hour in January to 17.6 cents at the end of August, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
At the same time, wind and solar remain the least expensive form of new-build electricity generation, according to the financial advisory firm Lazard.
The race for New Jersey governor saw Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill face off against Republican Jack Ciattarelli after state residents saw a roughly 20% price spike in electricity rates this year driven by reduced supply and growing demand from data centers and a slow roll-out of renewables, among other challenges.
Sherrill campaigned heavily on the issue, vowing to declare a state of emergency on utility costs on her first day in office and institute a utility rate freeze.
“Prices are spiking because of a huge power shortage — I’ll transform New Jersey’s energy picture to build new, cheaper, and cleaner energy generation, bring down families’ bills, and put the Garden State on track to hit our emissions and clean air goals,” Sherrill wrote in her campaign materials.
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Ciattarelli, meanwhile, vowed to implement a state energy master plan fueled by natural gas, nuclear and solar power but not offshore wind, which he promised to ban. “I will cap property taxes for families and freeze them for seniors, while killing offshore wind farms and expanding safe and clean natural gas and nuclear to lower electricity rates, which are currently out of control,” he told the NJ Spotlight News.
Ciattarelli also called for pulling the state out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a market-based program to reduce planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in Mid-Atlantic states that is similar to California’s cap-and-trade program.
Sherrill won the governor’s race with more than 56% of the vote.
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Energy prices are spiking in the U.S., in part, because the Trump administration has been cutting funding for wind, solar and battery energy storage, according to Nick Abraham, senior state communications director with the nonprofit League of Conservation Voters. The administration also has moved to block some projects that were almost completed.
“These races were about energy costs and affordability, and there were two clear cases made by candidates on both sides,” Abraham said. “One side wanted to stick with the Trump agenda — trying to ban clean energy and focusing on fossil fuels — and one side was trying to lower costs and implement clean energy strategies. And the results speak for themselves.”
According to Lazard, the cost of utility-scale solar ranges from $38 to $78 per megawatt hour and offshore wind from $37 to $86 per megawatt hour.
That’s compared with $71 to $173 per megawatt hour for coal and $149 to $251 per megawatt hour for gas peaking plants, among fossil fuels.
The issue was also top-of-mind with voters in Virginia, who took to the polls in a governor’s race between Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. The state is now home to more than a third of all data centers worldwide.
Spanberger focused heavily on affordability in housing, healthcare and energy during her campaign and said she would expand and incentivize the development of solar energy projects, along with technologies such as fusion, geothermal and hydrogen.
“Specific to energy, we have to have more generation here on the ground in Virginia,” Spanberger said in an interview with CBS in Richmond, adding that the state is already leading the way with the largest offshore wind farm in the country. The 2.6-gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is slated to produce enough clean energy to power up to 660,000 homes when completed in 2026.
Earle-Sears focused on an “all of the above” approach to energy generation including oil, natural gas and renewables, but also worked to remove the state from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which she described as an “energy tax” driving higher costs. She also promised to repeal the Virginia Clean Economy Act, a 2020 law that requires the state’s utilities to produce 100% renewable electricity by 2050.
Spanberger won the governor’s race with more than 57% of the vote.
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Meanwhile, voters in Georgia also turned out in a race for two seats on their five-member Public Service Commission, which oversees the state’s utilities. The commission approved six utility bill rate hikes over the last two years.
Democratic Challengers Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson won out over Republicans in Tuesday’s race with the largest statewide margins of victory by Democrats in more than 20 years, according to the Associated Press.
Both candidates made rising costs key in their campaigns, with Hubbard vowing to “bring clean, reliable and affordable energy to Georgia” and Johnson pushing for “bold investments in solar and wind.”
Their opponents, Republicans Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, backed a rate freeze but also resorted to Trump-style attacks, with Echols stating at a campaign event that Johnson, a Black woman, wanted to “bring DEI and wokeness” to the Public Service Commission.
Policy experts said the races were not only a bellwether for the 2026 midterms, but a strong signal that Americans support the clean energy transition.
“Voters chose leaders who see clean energy as the path to long-term affordability and reliability,” said Frederick Bell, associate director for state climate policy at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
