Energy prices are surging under the Governor Phil Murphy climate agenda that Mikie Sherrill would double down on. Voters are tapped out.
The Wall Street Journal has a great editorial today explaining why, after being solidly ahead for months, Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill suddenly finds herself tied with Republican Jack Ciattarelli in the latest polling on New Jersey’s imminent gubernatorial election. (See Noah’s recent posts, here and here.)
It’s not about the kerfuffle over Sherrill’s military personnel file. In the end, that will be a wash — or maybe even a slight net negative for Ciattarelli if voters believe the Trump administration was responsible for the illegal release of Sherrill’s records, which included publicizing her social security number, creating identity-theft concerns for the representative and her family. The National Personnel Records Center has apologized.
Sherrill’s implication in a 1994 cheating scandal at Annapolis was minor: While not not shown to have participated in it, she evidently knew about it and failed to disclose it to her superiors; as a penalty, she wasn’t permitted to walk with her class at the commencement ceremony, but she still graduated. She served for nine years and retired as a lieutenant in 2003; I haven’t found anything official about her discharge status but neither have I seen anything indicative of misconduct or dishonorable status.
She’s sinking in the polls because Garden State denizens are being crushed by skyrocketing power costs due to the Democrats’ climate obsessions, on which the unpopular Governor Phil Murphy (who, as a well-financed incumbent, barely eked out a win over then-unknown Ciattarelli four years ago) is an extremist — on whose policies Sherrill vows to double down.
Thanks to Murphy’s zeal for the Biden administration’s “Let’s Collapse Like Europe” energy agenda, state electricity prices have shot up an astronomical 53 percent in the past five years — which is even higher (by 21 percent) than the exorbitant nationwide climb during the Biden-era. As the Journal’s editors note, prices are still spiking: up another 6 percent this year, which is about twice the inflation rate.
The Journal’s editors continue:
New Jersey’s rates spiked 22% this summer as tight power supplies pushed up wholesale prices. Federal emissions regulations, the state’s renewable energy mandate and rich green-energy subsidies have made baseload nuclear and coal plants uneconomic. Five large coal plants and one nuclear reactor in the state have shut down since 2017.
PJM Interconnection runs the regional grid and uses capacity auctions to ensure plants can provide power on demand. Payments by utilities in those auctions, which ultimately are paid by electricity consumers, jumped to $16.1 billion this year from $2.2 billion in 2023. [Emphasis added.]
Typical of Democrats, Governor Murphy is scapegoating PJM for what his own policies have done. Meantime, the editorial elaborates, Murphy blocked a 115-mile pipeline through which natural gas fracked in Pennsylvania would have flowed into New Jersey; his intransigence has caused New Jerseyans to pay 35 percent more for fuel than the nationwide average. And then there’s governor’s lunatic mandate requiring the state to go 100 percent “clean energy” by 2035 (at least King Canute knew his mandate couldn’t actually stop the tides from rolling in). The mandate led developers to begin offshore wind projects that are now being abandoned because rising costs make completion prohibitively expensive.
Sherrill promises more of the same. As usual, where the money to pay for it all is going to come from is not explained. Obviously, the plan is to make lavish promises now and gouge the voters later.
New Jersey tilts blue, but it’s not Manhattan or San Francisco. Trump lost to Harris by less than six points in 2024 after Biden clobbered him by nearly 16 in 2020. There are many independents and centrists who were once entranced by the Democrats’ euphonious tropes about saving the planet — platitudes that incoherently demonize both carbon-emitting fossil fuels and nuclear power, the emissions of which are near zero. But the bills have come due and are only rising.
That’s why Sherrill is falling.