Energy prices are spiking everywhere, but the price hikes have been particularly acute in the Garden State.
On its face, the proposition Axios put to its readers on Friday morning might seem preposterous.
“Home utility bills are poised for a high profile in the battle to control Congress,” the outlet reported. “Democrats see an opening to transform power prices into political baggage for Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.”
How exactly? Well, Axios reporter Ben Geman notes that Donald Trump did promise to cut energy costs on the campaign trail, and, eight months into his term, he hasn’t. In addition, Republicans cut subsidies to the green-energy producers Joe Biden lavished with taxpayer dollars — without much reward.
That sounds like thin gruel. In theory, though, it isn’t inconceivable that a sophisticated and consistent Democratic messaging strategy could popularize the notion that insufficient green-energy cronyism is responsible for your rising power bills. We do not, however, need to retreat into theory. There is a real-world test of Axios’s proposition going on right now in New Jersey — one that Geman failed to explore. So far, it’s not panning out for Democrats as their consultant class thinks it could.
Energy prices are spiking everywhere, but the price hikes have been particularly acute in the Garden State. And power costs are an issue on which voters are focused ahead of November’s gubernatorial election. Outgoing Governor Phil Murphy has tried to mollify voters with gimmicks — pushing for meager subsidies to consumers to offset costs and pressuring power companies to postpone rate hikes until the fall, when demand declines along with the summer heat. If GOP gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli’s conduct is any indication, these gestures have not assuaged the state’s overstretched voters. He has made exorbitant power costs a central feature of his campaign.
So, how has the Democratic candidate for governor, Representative Mikie Sherrill, leveraged the numerous political opportunities that consumer hardships have presented to the Democratic Party? By proposing price fixing, of course.
“When I take office, the average New Jersey family won’t see an increase in utility rates for an entire year,” Sherrill promised this week. Her plan consists of declaring a power-related state of emergency, which would grant her the authority to freeze utility rates.
In addition, she pledged to immediately break ground on some of the state’s stalled “solar and battery storage projects” — a pledge that will ring hollow to any New Jerseyan familiar with the doomed trajectory the state’s offshore wind farm project followed — while modernizing and expanding existing nuclear and natural gas power plants.
And of course, there will be lawsuits. Democrats in the state blame the regional transmission organization PJM Interconnection for mismanaging “the implementation of new energy sources, particularly clean-energy sources,” the New Jersey Globe reported. But Sherrill wants you to know she’s not wedded to green energy as the only way to relieve the pressure on the grid.
Yes, many of the “projects in the queue” are “clean power projects,” she confessed. But she’s also open to “building new nuclear plants,” if complicated and prolonged negotiations with neighboring states allow for that sort of thing. But Sherrill knows time is of the essence. So, “If they are going to continue to mismanage our grid like this, then yes, I’ll explore all options to drive in capacity and drive down costs.” That’s just the sort of grudging, reluctant compliance New Jersey voters want to see!
Unbeholden to uncompromising environmentalist pressure groups, Ciattarelli has had an easier time promoting a consistent message when it comes to power costs by endorsing an all-of-the-above strategy to boost on-demand power generation. And while he has not let PJM off the hook either, the GOP nominee does not have to mince words when conveying to voters what the problem is and how we got here: “Policies obsessed with disastrous offshore wind farms,” he observed, “electric vehicle mandates where government tells you what kind of car you can drive, and effectively banning natural gas, forcing New Jersey to import electricity from other states and pay through the nose for it.”
The sparse public polling of this race suggests it is still Sherrill’s to lose. Environmental factors, like the presence of a Republican in the White House, favor her. But her victory would be a historic feat. In 2021, Murphy became the first Democratic governor of New Jersey to win a second term since Brendan Byrne’s 1981 victory. An elected Democratic governor has not been succeeded by another elected Democratic governor in the Garden State since Richard Hughes defeated Wayne Dumont in 1965. Sherrill could very well make history.
And yet, the power bill issue is not a sleeper anymore, and it threatens to upend the race. To judge from the Democratic nominee’s maladroit handling of it, this is hardly the slam-dunk Axios’s Democratic sources seem to think it is.