Closely watched gubernatorial campaigns in Virginia and New Jersey are serving as testing grounds for how candidates will use surging electricity prices to their advantage in next year’s midterm elections.
The off-year elections in both states have long been seen as previews of the midterms and measures of parties’ standing among voters. What’s different this year is the unprecedented spike in U.S. electricity demand — and voters’ concerns about soaring energy prices.
In New Jersey, Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill will face Republican Jack Ciattarelli. In Virginia, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger will face Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. Both Democrats are favored to win in most polling.
Democrats point to the Republican-led One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which terminated tax credits for wind, solar and other clean energy technologies, as well as President Donald Trump’s cancellations of major renewable energy projects and grants.
“Utility bills are rising and hitting families in ways that feel difficult to stomach. And Donald Trump is canceling projects he doesn’t like because he thinks they’re Democratic projects,” said Dan Kanninen, a Democratic strategist who leads Arc Initiatives and worked for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
“People see that kind of political posturing, especially in the face of rising costs, as offensive,” he continued. “We will see what happens on Election Day in Virginia and New Jersey. But I think this is smart politics and good messaging. And if it does bear fruit, you’re likely to see this be one of those tracks, like grocery costs, that really hits through the races next year.”
Republicans aren’t quick to concede on the issue and think it could be a winner for the GOP, especially in New Jersey, where the incumbent governor, Phil Murphy, is a Democrat.
“Energy and affordability are a key issue,” said Sen. Anthony Bucco, the Republican leader in the New Jersey Senate, pointing to both rising utility bills and Murphy’s doomed effort to develop offshore wind.
“The Democrat policy was too much, too fast,” he said, pointing to both Murphy’s renewable energy goals as well as national Democrats’ opposition to fossil fuel development. “And now those chickens are coming home to roost, because we don’t have enough energy production to meet the demands.”
Polling from Fairleigh Dickinson University in August found that voters mainly blame Murphy and utilities for the price hikes, depending on the voters’ party preferences.
“The truth is that voters blame incumbents when they don’t like the way things are going,” Dan Cassino, the polling organization’s executive director, said in an email.
“If people are unhappy about electricity prices when they’re voting in the midterms next year, they’re going to take it out on whoever is in charge, and right now, Donald Trump is doing an excellent job of making himself the center of attention.”
Similar polling in Virginia has not been published. But surveys, like a September one from Virginia Commonwealth University, have found that voters see the cost of living as their top priority in the election.
Price spikes
New Jersey’s electricity bills rose by about 20 percent in June, while Dominion Energy has projected that meeting Virginia’s climate goals while powering a data center boom could raise monthly utility bills by $255 a month by the end of 2035.
In both states, energy costs have gotten significant time in debates, and both sides are making it a big focus of advertising.
The Democratic candidates — Sherrill in New Jersey and Spanberger in Virginia — both have the edge over their GOP counterparts in overall polling, likely fueled heavily by opposition to Trump and the states’ blue politics. But in such close races, any issue could be decisive.
Spanberger has called for an expansion in a variety of energy sources, including solar and offshore wind, and for policies to protect utility ratepayers from having to pay a share of the costs for the growing data center sector’s energy needs.
“We are the largest net importer of energy in the country,” Spanberger said in a debate this month, predicting an “impending energy crisis.” She blamed the Republican candidate, Earle-Sears, for supporting Trump’s cancellations of energy grants to the state.
Earle-Sears has criticized Spanberger for her support of wind and solar, calling such sources unreliable. “Well, if you look outside, the sun isn’t shining and the breeze isn’t blowing, then what, Abigail? What will you do?”
The Republican put the blame for high costs on the 2019 Virginia Clean Economy Act, which aims to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions-producing electricity by 2050, and said she’d work to get more generation powered by coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas.
In a September New Jersey debate, Sherrill said the Republican megalaw is partly responsible for utility prices, as are grid operator PJM and New Jersey’s own Board of Public Utilities.
“Everybody at the table’s at fault. And they keep jumping the costs onto the ratepayer here in New Jersey,” she said.
The Republican gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey, Ciattarelli, blamed Murphy and Democrats in the state Legislature for policies that failed to keep the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station open and kept the state in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
Appraising all this, Bucco noted: “Both parties are working extremely hard to get their message out, to convince the voters that our policies and our message will deliver … a more affordable New Jersey.”
New Jersey state Sen. Mike Testa, a Republican who represents beach communities like Cape May and Wildwood, recently posted to social media an ad in which a husky-voiced, noir-inspired animated woman declares, “You know what turns me on? A man who takes control.”
She then brandishes an electric bill. “Especially of this.” She blames Democrats for making people “hot under the collar” over rising prices.
‘The public blames both sides’
It’s unclear, though, if this year’s messages are breaking through.
The deputy GOP leader in the New Jersey Senate, Bob Singer, argued that today’s high electricity prices could be directly linked to Democratic policies. But he doesn’t expect voters to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt.
“It’s tough, because I think the public blames both sides of the aisle,” Singer said.
“It’s nice to say — which is true — that we’ve been in the minority 20 years. But I don’t think the public cares about that,” he said. “They just care about ‘What are you doing to fix it.’”
The collapse of Murphy’s offshore wind plans helped boost Ciattarelli and put Sherrill on defense, New Jersey Republicans say.
Nationally, those dynamics are reversed: Democrats are hammering Republicans’ renewable energy rollbacks as driving power off the grid and pushing up bills.
“We are in the middle of an affordability crisis and a man-made energy crisis solely worsened by Donald Trump and Republicans. And I think that does create a political problem for them heading into 2026,” said Christina Polizzi, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Climate Power.
New Jersey and Virginia serve as good places to road-test for midterm messaging, she said, because their major issues — like data centers’ growing energy demand or Republicans thwarting renewable energy supplies — are now spreading nationwide.
“This is a really salient moment for Democrats to be able to talk about the fact that your bills are going up because Donald Trump has taken a sledgehammer to clean energy,” Polizzi said.
This story also appears in Climatewire.
