Electricity prices and production were explicitly on the ballot in this election, and nowhere more so than New Jersey’s gubernatorial race, won by Mikie Sherrill over her Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli.
Heatmap:
Mikie Sherrill was vulnerable. While New Jersey’s gubernatorial elections tend to favor the party not in control of the White House, no party had won three straight terms in the governor’s mansion at Drumthwacket since the Kennedy administration.
Yet the Democratic congresswoman and former Navy helicopter pilot defeated her Republican rival, former New Jersey State Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, on Tuesday night by a comfortable margin of 56% to 43% at press time.
To get there, Sherrill had to overcome not only historical precedent but a potentially devastating kitchen table issue: New Jersey has seen its already high electricity prices rise faster than almost anywhere else in the country, with retail rates going up as much as 20% this summer alone.
It could have proved politically lethal. Heatmap polling has shown that voters blame their state government and electric utility for rising rates more than anyone currently or formerly in power in Washington, D.C. And they are worried about electricity prices — according to CNN exit polling, the top issues among New Jersey voters were taxes and the economy, with about 60% saying that electricity costs were a “major problem where they live.”
New Jersey League of Conservation Voters:
On energy policy, Ciattarelli has opposed advancing clean solutions that would lower electricity bills for working families while creating union jobs right here in New Jersey – or at least he says he opposes them now.
Before Ciattarelli’s buddy, President Donald Trump, turned against offshore wind, Ciattarelli supported offshore wind development in 2016, joining a bipartisan consensus dedicated to unlocking this critical, cost-saving, natural resource to benefit our state.
He seems to have forgotten that, saying, “I’ve always said that wind farms off our Jersey Shore are bad economic policy, bad environmental policy, and bad energy policy.”
Always?
Again, he can say what he wants to pander to a MAGA base, but his voting record says otherwise. He would rather eliminate thousands of union jobs and a cheaper source of energy than defy Trump.
Is someone who flip-flops at the drop of a hat the person you would trust to serve as your governor?
Ciattarelli has at least been more consistent in his opposition to solar energy – the cheapest source of electricity. He voted against S2276, which would have expanded solar energy development in New Jersey.
And he repeatedly opposed New Jersey’s joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, to align energy policy with neighboring states in the Northeast. RGGI has provided our state with billions of dollars of investments in programs that lower energy costs for working families by boosting clean energy, improving energy efficiency and providing direct relief to ratepayers. These cost-saving benefits would all end if Ciattarelli is elected as New Jersey’s next governor.
Sherrill sought to turn the electricity cost issue from a burden to an advantage by making a clear and simple pledge: that she would declare a state of emergency and freeze utility bills. “On day one, I’m declaring a state of emergency on utility hikes. I’ll freeze those rate hikes to lower your family’s bills… New Jersey, I am not playing. I am not writing a strongly worded letter, I am not starting up a working group, I’m not doing a 10 year study. I am declaring a state of emergency,” Sherrill declared at a pre-election rally.
The results speak for themselves, but they are not entirely unexpected. Sherrill had consistently led in polling against Ciattarelli and even had a 10-point lead on who would handle energy costs better, according to a Fox News poll.
“Mikie Sherrill took the issue of soaring utility bills seriously and centered her campaign around a concise solution to this ongoing crisis,” Skanda Amarnath, the executive director of economics think tank Employ America, told me. “She deserves credit for not shying away from what could have easily been a liability of a campaign issue.”
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Sherrill also embraced nuclear energy on the trail, one of the few non-politically-polarizing energy generation sources left in the United States, saying she would “immediately develop a plan for a new nuclear power site in Salem County.”
Ciattarelli stuck to standard Republican moves on energy, saying he would ban offshore wind and take New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the Northeastern cap-and-trade system.
“The price freeze was a very smart move because it was very bold in a way. It’s very Trumpy,” Crawford said. “I’m going to use an executive order to freeze prices. I’m going to fight for you. I’m going to take the fight to PJM. She’s not really worrying as much about the details, but she’s calling attention to the issue. I think that did kind of make energy prices a bigger issue in the campaign and put Ciattarelli on the defensive a little bit.”
Now Sherrill will have to deal with the politics and practicalities of actually implementing a price freeze, navigating potential legal challenges, and maintaining the necessary investment levels in the state’s grid in order to meet its decarbonization goals.
“For the first time in a long time, utility bills became a top issue in a gubernatorial election. In New Jersey, both candidates leaned heavily on utility affordability messaging, feeling pressure from voters to demonstrate leadership on this issue,” Charles Hua, the executive director of Powerlines, told me. “Now, it is imperative for Governor Sherrill to deliver on her promise to make utilities affordable — voters will be paying attention.”
Environmental groups hailed Sherrill’s win as a victory for renewables against the regulatory assault launched on them by President Trump and as a sign that advocates for renewables could effectively leverage the electricity price issue to their advantage.
“Make no mistake, out of control energy costs were a top tier issue in this year’s election, and in Sherrill, New Jerseyans have elected a governor who knows that renewable energy is cheaper, cleaner, and faster to deploy than dirty, old alternatives, and who has a strong mandate to lead the Garden State forward,” EDF Action president David Klieve said in a statement.
In an upset, Democrats ousted two Republican members of Georgia’s utility board on Tuesday, according to preliminary results from the secretary of state’s office.
The closely watched races for two of the five seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission had been viewed not only as a referendum on rising electric bills but also as a bellwether for next year’s contests for governor and U.S. Senate.
Energy costs rose sharply around the country in 2022, driven by a spike in natural gas prices when Russia invaded Ukraine. In Georgia, additional factors in the state’s high utility bills have included $17 billion in cost overruns from nuclear generators and new infrastructure to support an anticipated surge in electricity demand from data centers.
Mr. Kemp and the utility commission praised a deal this year with Georgia Power to freeze base rates for three years. Critics, though, contended that ratepayers would still have to cover hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel and storm-damage costs.
Democrats criticized Republicans for embracing fossil fuels to generate electricity for data centers, as well as for backing away from clean energy, in lock step with the Trump administration.
According to one poll just a few years ago 83% of people wanted more wind power, 90% wanted more solar, 83% wanted more government help for both, and 37% wanted more nukes.
The idea that nukes are not polarizing is absurd. The increase in support for them and decrease for support for wind and solar has been driven entirely by lies by the far right and the disinformation industry funded with tens of billions of dollars from fossil fuel and other corporations, the lunatic right wing and dark money sources.
To be more precise, the changes in support are also being driven by desperation, as both those who accept the science of climate catastrophe and those who “don’t”, but in fact know it’s happening anyway, realize time is passing with no progress, and utter disaster is approaching. So they support either renewables, or both, or nukes and not renewables, but the whole complex and contradictory mess is still driven by the far right’s lies. (Note that even in that first poll, the difference in support for wind vs solar was driven by lies about birds and acquiescence to psychopaths’ power of suggestion over opinions about esthetics.)