One Virginia voter, Kim Wilson, lamented at a town hall recently that her electricity bill seems to go up every month, no matter how much she tries to mitigate the costs. She was drawn to the event in part by its title: “The energy bills are too damn high.”
“It’s way too high,” Wilson readily agreed.
In New Jersey, Herb Michitsch of Kenilworth said his electric bill has climbed to nearly $400 a month, or more than four times what it was when he and his wife moved into their home half a century ago.
“Something really has to be done,” Michitsch said.
That something must be done is pretty much where the agreement ends. It's what must be done that splits politicians back into rival camps.
Democratic candidates in the two states are promoting windmills and solar panels. The two states’ Republican nominees are more closely aligned with the policies of President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a “con job” and promotes more traditional energy sources like oil, gas and coal. New Jersey Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli says Democrats have driven up costs with their clean energy push.
Ciattarelli says he would pull New Jersey out of a regional greenhouse gas trading bloc, which Democratic incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy reentered when he first took office in 2018.
“It’s been a failure,” Ciattarelli said at the final debate of the campaign. “Electricity is at an all-time high.”
In Virginia’s open race to succeed a term-limited GOP incumbent, Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears are at odds over the development of renewable energy sources.
Spanberger has laid out a plan to expand solar and wind production, praising a wind project off the coast of Virginia Beach. In a debate against her opponent, she also said she would “ensure that data centers pay their fair share” as costs rise. The state is home to the world’s largest data center market.
Republican Winsome Earle-Sears wasn't having it.
“That’s all she wants, is solar and wind,” Earle-Sears said of Spanberger at the debate. “Well, if you look outside, the sun isn’t shining and the breeze isn’t blowing, and then what, Abigail, what will you do?”
