Tuesday’s elections delivered Democrats something more than a pair of governor’s mansions: It offered them a midterm strategy.
The party swept Virginia and New Jersey’s marquee gubernatorial elections, along with important down-ballot races in Pennsylvania and Georgia, after months of hammering a cost-of-living message that tied Republicans to soaring electricity bills.
The GOP bet big on energy politics, too, with Republican campaigns pouring millions of dollars into energy-focused ads while President Donald Trump used his bully pulpit to argue “A DEMOCRAT VOTE MEANS A DOUBLING, AND EVEN TRIPLING, OF YOUR ENERGY BILLS.”
The results: decisive Republican losses in every state that held major elections.
New Jersey Democrats will have a mandate to test a controversial rate freeze, after Rep. Mikie Sherrill scored a wider-than-expected victory over Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican nominee who in 2021 nearly unseated Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
Virginia Democrats will have the power to resume the state’s climate policies after four years of gridlock. Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, giving Democrats a governing trifecta while expanding their narrow majority in the Legislature’s lower chamber by at least 13 seats.
Pennsylvania Democrats retained three state Supreme Court justices, maintaining the party’s 5-2 majority as the high court considers a pivotal climate case. And by winning two seats on the Public Service Commission, Georgia Democrats gained their first toehold in state government in nearly a generation.
Climate hawks argue those results demonstrate Trump’s attacks on renewables have transformed energy into a new Republican vulnerability.
“GOP candidates were playing a weak hand on energy and got caught bluffing,” said Justin Balik, state policy director for the advocacy group Evergreen Action.
As Democrats agonize over the future direction of their party, greens said their message worked for moderates such as Spanberger to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist.
“The winning candidates represented the full ideological spectrum of the Democratic Party but were united by a common theme — addressing the rising cost of living for the American people,” Lori Lodes, executive director of the green group Climate Power, wrote in a memo circulated Tuesday night.
“To win in 2026,” she wrote, “candidates should remain on offense on costs and position energy prices, along with issues like health care, at the center of their messaging, making clear that Trump and Republicans are responsible for raising electricity bills by taking affordable, reliable clean energy off the grid.”
The League of Conservation Voters said its state affiliates spent $7 million across Virginia, New Jersey and Georgia focused on energy affordability.
For example, New Jersey LCV spent $1.7 million on ads attacking Ciattarelli for supporting “Trump’s cuts to energy production” that could “jack up bills in New Jersey.” And by the time early voting had started, a Fox News poll found likely voters trusted Sherrill more than Ciattarelli on energy costs by 10 points.
Sara Schreiber, LCV’s senior vice president of campaigns, said the lessons of 2025’s high energy prices won’t be limited to a single electoral cycle.
“The energy affordability crisis is a seismic event that will shape next year’s elections and beyond. In 2026, any candidate who supports a high-cost energy agenda will face an activated electorate ready to vote for change,” she wrote in a memo circulated late Tuesday.
Republicans offered localized explanations for the losses: Atlanta’s municipal elections turned out voters in Democratic strongholds without corresponding draws in Georgia’s Republican-leaning areas. Pennsylvania has only dumped a single justice since 1968. New Jersey leans toward Democrats normally. And the Trump administration’s layoffs of federal workers are uniquely resonant in Virginia.
Trump, in a post on Truth Social, blamed his party’s losses on the ongoing government shutdown as well as his own absence from the ballot.
But in the run-up to Tuesday’s elections, Trump himself had framed the races as contests over the future of energy. During a tele-rally for Ciattarelli, Trump said the New Jersey Republican “knows energy better than anybody I know outside of the energy business.”
“Jack is going to be great and he’s going to cut your energy bills in half, and she’s going to double your energy bills so New Jersey, just on energy bills alone … on energy alone, I think Jack should win,” Trump said.
Now that they’ve won, Democrats will face pressure to deliver on campaign promises to hold down electricity prices.
That is likely easier said than done.
In her victory speech Tuesday, Sherrill repeated her pledge to freeze electric bills.
“’I’m going to declare a state of emergency on Day 1 to drive down your utility costs,” the governor-elect said to roaring applause.
But her plan has faced skepticism from across the spectrum — including from Murphy, who has said he’s “not sure how you’d actually do that” and noted he’s been working on the issue for years.
And in Virginia — where the issue of electricity prices are entangled with the state’s data center boom and utilities’ political power — some activists are hoping Spanberger will act as a check on the energy-hungry facilities.
But in her victory speech Tuesday, Spanberger pointedly avoided saying the phrase “data center.”
“We’re going to make sure that large utility users — make sure that they pay their fair share,” Spanberger said, while also calling for more in-state electricity generation.
Spanberger and Sherrill have demonstrated that Democrats have popular solutions to the problems voters care about, said Balik of Evergreen Action.
Now they need to prove to voters they can deliver ratepayer relief, utility reform and renewable energy deployment.
“This is a moment for really thoughtful transition team work,” Balik said.
This story also appears in Climatewire and Energywire.
