Saying the Climate Part Out Loud
Elections Put the Green in Economic Populism
By Johanna Bozuwa
Last week’s election showed sweeping victories for Democrats across the country. Democrats won on platforms of affordability, fights against Trump cuts, and visions of a better future. While few high profile candidates ran on climate-first platforms, climate still played a big role not only in the context in which politicians ran but also in the proposals they put forward.
Climate may have shifted to the wayside in political discourse but its impacts are getting worse. The cost of climate disasters now make up three percent of GDP in the United States. Electricity rates are spiking to new highs from the dual stress of new load demand from data centers and more extreme weather. Jobs are getting more deadly, especially for agricultural workers expected to spend the majority of their day outside. Everyday life looks different—and harder—for working-class Americans because of the crisis.
In Heatmap’s coverage of the Zohran Mamdani win, Robinson Meyer argues that this ecosocialist left his climate bonafides at the door in this campaign and that he’ll be forced to pick them back up in office. We argue he just changed his messaging strategy, not his commitment to climate. As our colleague Batul Hassan noted to New York Focus, Mamdani offers a way “to tie the climate action that we need to kitchen table concerns.”
In short, New York City’s Mamdani is spearheading a new sort of green economic populism. He is talking about fast and free buses and upgrading schools, embedding decarbonization into his plans for action. During his time in the state assembly, he was instrumental in passing the Build Public Renewables Act—an idea that the Climate and Community Institute helped bring into being. Brought into the Mayoral role with the biggest wave of votes since the 1960s, he offers a new way of thinking about how to connect voters to tangible benefits that a greener, more affordable New York can bring.
While Mamdani’s win rightfully drew the most attention, climate was on the ballot elsewhere, too.
New Jersey: New Jersey’s newly elected Governor Mikie Sherrill unexpectedly leaped to victory. One of her core campaign messages was price controls on electricity. The grid manager, PJM, has largely failed to get cheap, clean electricity online and, with increasing electricity demand, people are experiencing spiking prices. As she said at a campaign rally, “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.”
Virginia: Abigail Spanberger won Virginia’s gubernatorial race handily. She seemed to be swapping notes with her former roommate and now-governor elect of New Jersey. Virginia is the home to the most data centers in the world and their presence is dramatically increasing electricity costs for residents. Spanberger’s campaign platform, “Abigail’s Affordable Virginia Plan,” had an extensive section on lowering electricity costs by investing in offshore wind infrastructure, deploying distributed energy resources like solar and storage, and ensuring that data centers don’t raise Virginian’s bills. Not only did Spanberger take the governor’s mansion, the state house will look radically different with close to a two-thirds Democratic majority to help drive the agenda.
Georgia: Two new Public Service Commissioners focused on climate got anointed by an overwhelming majority in Georgia—Dr. Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard—against Republican incumbents. They each won with over 60 percent of the vote after campaigning on lowering utility bills, increasing clean energy, and enforcing more accountability on Georgia Power, the state’s utility. With a total of just five commissioners on the Georgia PSC, this swing could be instrumental in shifting power dynamics in the state—figuratively and literally. For instance, Georgia Power is currently requesting approval for a massive, unprecedented gas buildout that would be decimating to climate targets and also terrible for community pollution levels. In Atlanta, Kelsea Bond also won their city council seat with an overwhelming amount of the vote on a platform of people over profit, and a commitment to public goods like expanded public transit under the banner “green new infrastructure.”
California: California passed Prop 50 handily, significantly shifting the Congressional districts in the state. Spearheaded by Governor Newsom, the intent was to grow the Democratic base in California as a reaction to Trump’s call to action for Republicans to redistrict in their favor to pack the House. So what’s the deal for climate? With room for more progressive politics and new people jockeying for political positions, this is a place to watch how things like skyrocketing insurance from wildfires, increasing electricity rates, and EVs and transition mineral extraction play out in this new political terrain.
This election showed a new form of climate politics on the horizon. As compared to climate-forward platforms and a focus on green jobs of previous elections, we saw a shift to tackling increasing unaffordability with programs that will also help usher in a green transition. Mamdani brought a message of fast and free buses that could get people out of cars and onto public transit, lowering car pollution. Spanberger and Sherrill took on increasing electricity bills, offering a range of different strategies from price controls to clean energy deployment to push down prices. The Georgia PSC went from a little-known race to a national story with big wins for clean energy advocates. The increasing frame of affordability across the board is a strong and necessary shift when previously the Democrats had little in the way to offer other than “keep the status quo” and “defend democracy.”
Tackling affordability without considering climate is a fool’s errand; climate impacts will keep costs rising unless root causes are handled. As we move toward a more economic populist agenda, the green is going to be integral. Mamdani and his election night partners seem to realize this. Now it is their time to govern like that, too.