DES MOINES, Iowa — Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he knows Republicans could suffer political pain for the electricity prices that are rising before next year’s midterm elections. But he hopes voters will know to blame the Democrats instead.
“The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” Wright told POLITICO during a visit to wind- and corn-rich Iowa. Still, he said: “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office.”
Electricity prices at the end of July averaged 5.5 percent higher than a year earlier amid surging power demand.
Wright’s acknowledgment of economic reality offered a bit of a contrast to President Donald Trump’s relentlessly sunny proclamations about the nation under his watch, from Trump’s promises of a new “golden age” to his predictions that “we’re going to have the greatest economic boom in history.” Wright’s words also look ahead to one of the potential sleeper issues of the 2026 election, as the parties seek to own the message about how Trump’s effort to thwart the development of wind and solar power is affecting electricity customers’ wallets.
