U.S. Climate Politics Almanac: 2025 State Elections: Virginia, New Jersey, and Georgia

Today, the U.S. Climate Politics Almanac reviews the stinging rebuke the American voters delivered to the fossil-fueled Trump autogolpe at the ballot box, putting Democrats in charge of the governor’s mansion and legislatures in Virginia and New Jersey, and giving climate-hawk Democrats a foothold on the Georgia Public Service Commission, which oversees the electric utilities in the state. Relentless Republican attacks on socialists, immigrants, trans people, and the Green New Deal only seemed to increase enthusiasm for change from the voters, who are buckling under the plutocratic regime’s surging costs for food, housing, and electric utilities.

Virginia

Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Blue Dog Democrat during three terms in the US House, easily defeated right-wing Republican lieutenant governor Winsome “Losesome” Sears to win election as Virginia’s first female governor.

Jay Jones, a former delegate and longstanding critic of Virginia’s dominant investor-owned utility Dominion, won his election for Attorney General against Republican incumbent Jason Miyares. Jones overcame a wave of cash from Dominion to win the Democratic primary, then won the general election that was more competitive than the gubernatorial election. National Republicans spent heavily drawing attention to leaked texts from Jones purportedly supporting political violence in their unsuccessful attempt to re-elect Miyares, who has been supportive of Trump’s authoritarian attacks on immigrant communities, trans people, and public universities.

Spanberger will replace Glenn Youngkin —a private equity financier of dirty energy— who won election as Virginia’s governor in 2021. As governor, Youngkin worked to undermine his predecessor’s Virginia Clean Energy Economy Act (VCEA), withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and offered Big Tech millions in incentives for a data-center-construction free-for-all. Now, Virginia is the “data center capital of the world,” which has driven an “immense increase in energy needs” and a sharp increase in Virginians’ utility rates.

Youngkin’s energy policy has promoted a “moonshot” bid to build small modular nuclear reactors, and he signed a law allowing Dominion to send the bill to Virginia ratepayers. He has also vetoed a green bank bill, circumvented the legislature to install a coal lobbyist as a senior adviser, and ended Virginia’s participation in the Clean Cars program. “He just doesn’t like clean energy,” one advocate said after Youngkin vetoed bills to add more small solar energy projects to the grid, even though they were bipartisan and supported by Dominion.

Knocking out twelve Republican incumbents, taking one open Republican seat (District 89), and losing no seats, Democrats greatly increased their 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates to 64-36. Democrats hold a 20-19 edge in the state senate, and there were no senate elections this year, so Spanberger will become the first governor to enter office with a governing trifecta since Doug Wilder in 1990.

A straightforward agenda for this new trifecta lies in resurrecting the slew of pro-climate legislation that Youngkin vetoed or carved to pieces this year: bills to boost battery storage; increase energy efficiency; support Virtual Power Plants; build out EV charging infrastructure; develop a clean energy workforce; and ease the energy burden for low-income utility ratepayers. Importantly, we will also see whether there is action on bills to increase transparency and planning in the permitting process for data centers. The General Assembly generally punted on bills to ensure that data center operators, not ratepayers, are on the hook for the AI bubble bonanza, as well as legislation to hold utilities accountable to their clean energy targets amidst the data center buildout. Those will be Virginia’s most critical bills to watch in 2026.

The AI bubble energy explosion has led House Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) and Senate majority leader Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax) to express openness to tweaking the VCEA in some fashion. Whether that means strengthening or weakening the VCEA hinged in part on how many pro-climate Democrats were elected to the House of Delegates.

Clean Virginia endorsed 67 candidates who refused to accept money from Dominion, including six incumbent Republicans. Of those six, Joseph McNamara (District 40) and Mike Cherry (District 74) won close races, Will Davis (District 39) and Lee Ware (District 72) won easily, and two lost (Districts 71 and 75). Nine of the 13 newly seated Democrats refused Dominion money, as did 27 incumbents. The Clean Virginia caucus now has 49 out of 100 delegates.

Climate Cabinet endorsed 18 candidates for the House of Delegates (italicized below), all of whom won. Lead Locally endorsed 21 candidates (underlined), 20 of whom won (Mary Person lost by 8 points in District 83).

• Adele McClure (Incumbent-District 2)

• Kathy Tran (Incumbent-District 18)

• Rozia Henson (Incumbent-District 19)

• Joshua Thomas (Incumbent- District 21)

• Elizabeth Guzman (Flip-District 22)

• John McAuliff (Flip - District 30)

• Sam Rasoul (Incumbent-District 38)

• Lily Franklin (Flip-District 41)

• May Nivar (Flip- District 57)

• Rodney Willett (Incumbent - District 58)

• Stacey Carroll (Flip - District 64)

• Joshua Cole (Incumbent- District 65)

• Nicole Cole (Flip- District 66)

• Mark Downey (Flip-District 69)

• Jessica Anderson (Flip-District 71) 

• Leslie Mehta (Flip-District 73)

• Lindsey Dougherty (Flip-District 75)

• Mike Jones (Incumbent-District 77)

• Rae Cousins (Incumbent-District 79)

• Kimberly Pope Adams (Flip- District 82)

• Nadarius Clark (Incumbent-District 84)

• Virgil Thornton (Flip-District 86)

• Kacey Carnegie (Flip - District 89)

• Michael Feggans (Incumbent-District 97)

New Jersey

Despite his background as a Goldman Sachs executive, Governor Phil Murphy has generally been regarded as a climate ally, most especially in investing in a climate resilience and disaster preparedness strategy. Four years ago, Murphy’s surprisingly narrow re-election victory over Trumpy former Assemblymember Jack Ciatterrelli was interpreted as a sign that New Jersey was drifting to the right. This trend, plus the putatively lackluster campaign run by Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a New Dem in the U.S. House, caused national Republicans to invest strongly in Ciatterrelli. Ciatterrelli gave Trump an “A rating” and seemed to embrace the theory that Republicans would further strengthen their gains, especially with the state’s Latino voters.

Sherrill ended up winning a decisive, 13-point victory. Sherrill’s major campaign message was a promise to freeze utility rates and join other regional governors in seeking more aggressive changes from the grid operator PJM.

Meanwhile, a potentially significant long-term sea change took place in New Jersey down ballot. Murphy’s most significant contribution to New Jersey politics may be his inadvertent contributions to breaking the “County Line” culture that kept New Jersey’s political system in lockstep with corporate machine politics for years. With the abolition of the County Line, competitive primaries for New Jersey Assembly took place for the first time in decades. Democrats took a supermajority of the seats. The class of new progressive climate hawks are led by Hudson County Assemblymember Katie Brennan, who previously led New York’s Office of Resilient Homes and Communities, and Ravinder Bhalla, who had a track record of climate action as mayor of Hoboken. Lead Locally and Climate Cabinet endorsed both Brennan and Bhalla.

Georgia

Public Service Commissioner: Due to a protracted legal battle, it has been five years since voters got a say in who sits on Georgia’s five-member utility regulator, the Public Service Commission (PSC). Lead Locally and Climate Cabinet endorsed climate advocate Peter Hubbard and former Step Up Savannah director Dr. Alicia Johnson, the Democratic candidates for PSC in what became a highly competitive proxy battle in a key swing state. Georgia Conservation Voters spent millions in support of Hubbard and Johnson.

Republicans currently control all five seats, but Hubbard and Johnson won both seats up in this year’s election, giving Democrats a chance for a majority on the PSC in next year’s election. The current PSC majority, which includes utility-supported incumbents Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, has approved six rate increases while also blessing Georgia utilities’ continued reliance on and expansion of fossil fuel combustion. Republican governor Brian Kemp rallied around his fellow partisans, Commissioners Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, who waged a furious campaign against the “Green New Deal” purportedly being promoted by their opponents.

Mayor Mamdani

As everyone knows, N.Y. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim Democratic Socialist born in Uganda, won the New York City mayoral race. In our next post, The U.S. Climate Politics Almanac will have a deeper review of his historic victory and other important municipal races around the nation. In the meantime, here’s Mamdani’s victory speech, which begins, “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”

This morning, Mayor-elect Mamdani held his first press conference, flanked by transition team co-chairs Lina Khan, Maria Torres-Springer, Grace Bonilla and Elana Leopold:

Keep your inboxes open for our full review of the 2025 municipal climate races—there are almost too many victories to count.