WASHINGTON, November 21, 2025 — Since I wrote you last, I’ve spent time in Richmond, Virginia, San Francisco and San Diego, California, and Austin, Texas. I learned a lot in my travels, but I am very happy to be home.
Much has happened over the past two weeks. Energy costs and particularly consumers utility bills were a top-tier issue for voters in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and the races for public service commission in Georgia, where it’s not a stretch to say that they were the only issue in the race. EDF Action Virginia was proud to support Governor-elect Spanberger, and we had folks in the field knocking doors and helping to get out the vote (including yours truly, which made me happy!). We contributed to the success of the Spanberger campaign and to helping ensure that she has a workable governing majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. Our efforts were modest compared to those of others, and I want to particularly commend Clean Virginia, which has become a major force in state politics in a relatively short period of time.
EDF Action played a more central role in a ballot measure that may not have been high on your radar. In Texas, voters approved a measure that will create a dedicated stream of over $1 billion a year for water infrastructure — a record investment in the state. Winning the ballot initiative was not the most impressive thing about the overall effort to me — it was that we were able to get the measure referred to the ballot by the Texas legislature in the first place. That was a key step in a years-long effort that will be familiar to all longtime followers of EDF and EDF Action’s work. Our team built consensus across a diverse set of stakeholders to demonstrate that the funding was essential — linking arms with other environmental organizations and, critically, securing support from the state’s leading business voices. I was honored to participate in EDF’s Texas Advisory Board meeting last week, and learned quite a bit from Colin Leyden, our Texas State Director for EDF and EDF Action, and Vanessa Puig-Williams, who leads all our water work in the Lone Star State as they provided context about what the win means for our long-term water goals. (I also bought my daughter a shirt with an owl on it that warns: “Hootin’ Leads to Hollerin’”.)
While there have been some heartening wins, there are also some recent developments that give cause for concern. The Washington Post wrote a piece that called climate, “The big issue Democrats have stopped talking about,” and Governor Josh Shapiro traded away Pennsylvania’s authority to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to recalcitrant Republicans in Harrisburg in order to end a budget impasse. I’ve used this space on several occasions to talk about the lessons we should take away from the 2024 elections, and I don’t think we ought to stop talking about climate and energy in this moment, especially when the President and his administration are doing such a bad job of doing anything to lower costs and the American people are taking note. Nearly two in three Americans believe that President Trump is handling inflation poorly. His Treasury Secretary went on television and claimed that utility costs are a state issue beyond the President’s control or purview. That raises the obvious follow-up question, then: why did he promise he’d cut utility bills in half?
EDF continues to lead the way in raising the profile of decisions like the Secretary of Energy’s order, just extended for the third time, to mandate that a coal-fired power plant in Western Michigan remain open, in spite of the fact that the utility has calculated that every single day the plant remains open costs consumers $600,000. This is bad policy that leaves citizens with higher bills, fewer jobs, dirtier air, and increased emissions. I’m excited to continue to do all I can to help make that argument to the American people. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do it.