In this episode, I welcome back Caroline Spears from Climate Cabinet for a post-election debrief that, unlike last year’s, is full of good news. We explore how a slate of pro-climate candidates defied expectations in tough districts across the country, driven by a powerful backlash against the Trump administration.
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David Roberts
All right. Hello, everyone. This is Volts for November 10, 2025, “So, there were some elections. How’d they go?” I’m your host, David Roberts. In May of 2024, I introduced y’all to a group called Climate Cabinet, which is devoted to identifying state and local political races where a), there are substantial climate implications and b), a small amount of attention and money can make a big difference. The “moneyball of climate,” as the somewhat glib tag has it.
IIn November of 2024, I caught up with Caroline Spears, head of Climate Cabinet, about the races they had identified that year and how they had turned out. As you might imagine, that was a somewhat muted, not to say funereal, affair. (Listener, the races did not turn out well.)
Anyway, I have decided that this needs to be an annual Volts tradition. After the year’s elections in November, I’m going to check with Caroline about how they went.
I’m excited to have her here with me today for what is likely to be a much happier conversation than our last one. First, we are going to cover several individual races, and then toward the end, we will discuss what this all means for the electoral landscape in 2026.
All right, then, no further ado. Caroline Spears, welcome back to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Caroline Spears
Thanks for having me back.
David Roberts
What a difference a year makes. Much to talk about. How many races did Climate Cabinet track this year?
Caroline Spears
At Climate Cabinet, we were working on 45 races across the country this year.
David Roberts
And of those 45, how many went your way?
Caroline Spears
41. Yep.
David Roberts
Just to be clear, does this mean that Climate Cabinet chose to track a bunch of easy races that were sure victories?
Caroline Spears
Dave, I remember six or seven months ago, there are a few people, and I will name names, I will tell you who I was “Uh, I don’t know about them this year.” I remember sitting down with Jared DeLoof, our incredible political director, about six to eight months ago when — we get involved early, that’s where we’re getting involved in these races — the national mood was terrible and H.R.1 had just passed and I looked at him and said, “Are we sure that we’re going all in for John McAuliff in Virginia? What? This is an R +5.”
We just looked at each other, looked back at the numbers, looked at where the data was trending and said, “Maybe this is a multi-cycle play, but John is such an incredible — he was a climate advisor in the Biden administration. This guy would be an incredible asset to public service.” We were crazy, but we went for it. And then guess who won by 0.48% as of the last count on Tuesday? John McAuliffe.
David Roberts
A little attention and money can make a big difference. Let’s repeat that. To summarize, virtually everything went your way and it was not because you were picking easy races. You picked a bunch of challenging races that a year ago, even six months ago, even two weeks ago, a lot of people would have called extreme long shots and virtually everything worked out. We’re going to talk about some individual races and we can talk about the individual dynamics and the local dynamics and implications, etc.
I do think it’s important to acknowledge at the outset, clearly something was going on this year bigger than any individual candidate. Clearly this was an anti-Trump sweep — whatever else we say about the individual races, the national anti-Trump mood is the big story here. Don’t you agree?
Caroline Spears
Totally agree with that. I think we’re seeing, and that was shown across the country in the big turnout differentials we saw across many of these states, in many of these races. We’re still seeing candidates overperform — candidate quality is still important. If you’re someone who goes and talks to all of your voters and they meet you and you’re able to target messaging, you still have a big impact. The turnout differential was huge. It’s because people are focused on the national picture. People are very upset about what’s going on and that’s creating a lot of enthusiasm for voting.
David Roberts
Another thing that a lot of people are taking out of this is that the phenomenon of Trump, the reason he won both times, is that he pulled a lot of voters to the polls that were not previously voters, that were not typical or steady voters. There’s been all this debate, this question about whether those people would continue to come out, whether they would come out for non-Trump candidates. It looks like they won’t. It looks like they’re back on the couch. We’ll have to wait for a national election year.
But that’s how it looks, don’t you think? Trump is kind of a one of one.
Caroline Spears
That’s what we’ve seen in the past, where Trump — he’s a very emotional figure for a lot of people and he definitely engages folks. But I would also say that this year turnout was up. We saw turnout over 2021 levels. You have to pick a comparable year to get it. This isn’t true across the country, but turnout was up compared to 2021, which is our last comparable off-cycle election. You can look at turnout differentials. I think you can also say we are seeing more engagement from voters than we saw in years past.
That’s interesting. We definitely see a backlash against some of the federal policies. Abigail Spanberger winning by almost 20 points in Virginia — you are definitely seeing some federal backlash, especially there.
David Roberts
Somebody told me last night that every one of his endorsements lost. I don’t know if that’s true, but I think certainly the bulk of them did. Does Trump extend beyond Trump — I guess — is the question. It looks like it doesn’t.
Caroline Spears
He struggled with this in his first term as well. That’s not a new phenomenon. I do not track who Trump has or hasn’t endorsed. I try not to listen to that part of the news cycle. We’re very data driven. We focus on the state and local candidates, usually Trump is not getting involved there. But to the extent to which he can convert his brand across, he wasn’t very successful in his first term. It’s looking like that’s still holding in the second. We have three more years of this. We’ll see.
David Roberts
Let’s talk about some races then. Let’s start with the one nearest and dearest to my heart, the Georgia PSC election, which Volts listeners will be very familiar with since I did a whole pod on it a couple of weeks ago. Hank Green, beloved of the Internet, saw that pod and then made a video about it which went out to his millions of subscribers. It really seemed like word got out. Tell us how that turned out relative to expectations.
Caroline Spears
This is another one of those races where the fundamentals were on Hubbard and Johnson’s side going in. Let me be clear about the stakes going into this race. A lot of unprecedented things happened in the Georgia Public Service Commission race. First, public service commissions are never the top of the ballot.
This year they were. It’s never happened before. Second, it’s incredibly hard. Incumbent public service commissioners very rarely lose reelection. We only elect them in a handful of states. Incumbents almost never lose. There were cross-pressured things going into Tuesday. Coming into that night, my expectations were, “I think it’s going to be close. I can’t say who comes out.” The fundamentals are good, but the incumbency factor is so strong, especially for this type of election. To come out of Tuesday with a 60 - 40 is pretty unprecedented.
Hubbard and Johnson, the two candidates who flipped those seats, won 60% of the vote on Tuesday. That’s shocking. That’s why it’s generating national coverage.
David Roberts
Yeah. Toward the end of that race, it does seem like Republicans woke up a little bit. Governor Kemp started dumping money into it. You saw Marjorie Taylor Greene. They somehow caught Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ear and she started stumping about it. They made some effort to counteract this, but the margin was crazy relative to anyone’s expectations.
Caroline Spears
It was a blowout. There’s a lot of ink being spilled right now about why that was such — a 60-40 race in politics is wild. You have to look at why. There is a lot of ink spilled about why, but you really have to look at two: the affordability narrative, the electricity rates narrative that’s dominating a lot of the coverage, and the fact that a lot of folks in the state, especially the Ossoff campaign, were looking at this as a way to think about 2026 — as a testing ground for 2026.
There was investment in Democratic base turnout that also contributed. You brought those two pieces together and that’s how you get a result like that.
David Roberts
This seems a big signal that Dems are ready to turn out and that affordability is going to matter. Let’s also talk briefly about what’s going to happen next year in the Georgia PSC. In a sense, this was almost the appetizer. The main meal is next year. Tell us about what’s happening next year.
Caroline Spears
Maybe for you, Dave, but I hang out at state local government. The Georgia Public Service Commission was the main meal for the year.
David Roberts
The Georgia Public Service Commission — if there’s another one open next year, and if Democrats win that one, then they have a 3-2 majority on the Georgia PSC, which is a very big deal. Now, they have a minority, they have a voice. They can stop some things or slow some things down. If they win the one next year, then we’re really off to the races.
Caroline Spears
That’s a majority. It’s not just Georgia. Arizona is going to elect public service commissioners. They have a slightly different title for it — let’s not get wonky about it. It’s the folks who regulate the electricity sector in the state. It’s not just Georgia. We’re going to see these races across the country next year. This is the playbook for what voters care about, what people are engaged on. You have to look at those opportunities next year in Georgia and Arizona and say, if you have candidates who run on that clean energy affordability message and with the existing enthusiasm we’re seeing with voters, it’s a good combination for folks who want to run on how clean energy is lowering your electricity bills and run on the incumbent’s bad record.
In Georgia, the main theme was how many times the existing public service commissioner had raised people’s rates. In Arizona, same thing — raised rates multiple times over multiple years. Let’s talk about affordability, because what they’re doing, what they also did — the fastest to grid and cheapest to grid right now is solar and storage. Everyone listening knows that because you’ve been listening to Dave’s podcast about the cost drops we’ve seen. In Arizona, those commissioners have instead doubled down on expensive, polluting power plants. They took the state’s renewable portfolio standard and then gutted it for no reason.
They weren’t going to — They just took that 15% down to zero. This is the cheapest thing you could possibly be building right now.
David Roberts
I know. In Arizona. Arizona, for Christ’s sake. The sunniest state, I would imagine. This will be interesting, too, because I highlighted an Arizona — it’s called the Arizona Corporation Commission — I highlighted one of those races a year or two ago, and it was a blowout. The utilities love the incumbent commissioners, because the incumbent commissioners love the utilities. It’s very cozy, very hard for someone to break in, hard to get any attention, etc. All these things we’ve been talking about. It’ll be really interesting next year to see if some of this turnout, enthusiasm, new attention and awareness about PUCs, heightened concern about electricity prices — if all that can come together and change the Arizona race, it’ll be a nice A/B test, for me. It will show how things have changed.
Caroline Spears
It just shows what a win that was on Tuesday to see results like that. You’ve been following these races for a few years. You know how challenging they are, how the incumbency advantage is so strong there. It highlights the success.
David Roberts
That’s Georgia PSC. Congrats to everybody who worked hard on that. Let’s talk about Virginia. What a crazy story is Virginia — they booted a Republican governor in favor of a Democrat. They went from, what was it, a 51 to 49 majority?
Caroline Spears
One-seat majority.
David Roberts
In the House of Delegates to 64 out of 100. We were following this stuff on election night and I was following your feed and we were within spitting distance of getting a supermajority in the Virginia House of Delegates, which 0.0 people thought was even in the realm of possibilities. Talk a little bit about Virginia. What the dynamics are there, what Spanberger ran on, and what happened in the House of Delegates. That was a romp — a 10, whatever, 13 seat shift. That’s an incredible romp.
Caroline Spears
Flipping 13 seats is astonishing. What we clearly saw is that House of Delegates campaign — one thing that we talk a lot about is how early, by the time you and I are talking about some of these races, some of these have already been running for two years. That was absolutely the case in the Virginia House of Delegates. Folks started running for this easily over a year ago; 18 months ago is when we first started talking to folks who were interested in running, definitely running again and starting to put together our plans for it.
That was an astonishing number of flips. Expanding to 64 out of 100 seats was wild. Dave, I posted this because at some point in the night I go, “Are they close to a supermajority or three seats shy?” That was another one where the polling was underestimating. We really saw a lot of these districts that had already gotten a little bit more flippable, a little bit more competitive, but were still probably out of the window. I’m talking districts that in the 2010s were going R +15, R +20, got a lot more competitive. That’s the way of election of it all.
David Roberts
This is the election that Mike Johnson was trying to dismiss as, “Oh, it’s just blue states electing blue leaders. It’s no big deal.” Which is hilarious to me. Hilarious bit of coping.
Caroline Spears
There was a Republican governor. There is a Republican governor in the state of Virginia. There is until January. This is easily a purple state.
David Roberts
Tell us a little bit about the stakes in Virginia policy-wise, what might be possible now, what might happen now that couldn’t have happened before.
Caroline Spears
Going into Tuesday, here was the dynamic in Virginia. This is a state that after electing a trifecta a couple years ago, passed 100% clean energy legislation, the Virginia Clean Economy Act. This last governor did everything he could to take that backwards. The one thing that sums up Governor Youngkin’s stance on climate is that folks wanted to build a battery manufacturing facility bringing manufacturing jobs to the state of Virginia. He said, “I don’t want that.” You know who picked that one, right? Governor Whitmer in Michigan said, “Bring those jobs over here.” It moved. He turned down an electric vehicle manufacturing facility.
That was the disinterest in jobs, disinterest in building the clean energy economy that we were seeing. The one exciting piece of legislation for us to use was VPP legislation that did make it through. Kudos where kudos is due. We love VPP enabling legislation, things that bring down rates. But it was this stall out for four years. We knew we had leaders both in the House and in the Senate who had passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act. It was our job to say, “How do we put y’all in the driver’s seat again so you can keep moving forward?”
David Roberts
At the very least, that act is going to be more vigorously implemented.
Caroline Spears
Can I put one challenge?
David Roberts
Yeah.
Caroline Spears
It’s not all, “We’re excited that they passed the Virginia Clean Economy Act.” Many folks who are listening know about the PJM electricity price spikes. The northeast states have seen price increases on electricity. There are a lot of grid issues. There’s data center buildout. There are challenges facing that grid. The governor and the speaker and the leadership in Virginia have a big choice in front of them. They’re facing enormous pressure from those electricity price spikes. The choices in front of them are: do you expand clean energy or solar storage, DERs, VPPs — fastest to grid, cheapest to grid, let’s get that VPP legislation implemented, let’s get it working — or do you greenlight gas expansion? They will face a lot of pressure due to the second thing, but that’s the big choice.
David Roberts
A lot of national pressure, a lot of pressure from the utilities, a lot of pressure from Democratic consultants who want everyone to move to the right to capture swing voters. A lot of pressure from inside and outside the party. The pressure will be intense in Virginia.
Caroline Spears
The good thing is we now have leadership who looks at clean — if the election Tuesday had gone a different way, which of those two buckets we were ending up at. What we have now is a window of opportunity in a way that we simply didn’t have before Tuesday. They face an enormous place to show leadership the way that Governor Pritzker just showed leadership in Illinois, which is, “This is how we keep the electricity prices under control. This is how we keep the state on track.” We just saw Governor Pritzker say, “Let’s build out storage to make our grid affordable, to make our grid resilient.”
They have that choice in front of them, and we’re in a much better spot than we were before Tuesday.
David Roberts
What’s your read on Spanberger? The rap on her is that she’s a moderate, which different people feel different ways about. Do you think she’s got the steel, the spine, to stand up to that kind of pressure and to double down on clean energy? Do you have a read?
Caroline Spears
We really got more involved in the House of Delegates races this year. I will say that Governor-elect Spanberger, Rep. Spanberger, before Tuesday, did work in the CIA. If you’re asking about someone with steel, that background speaks for itself. She’s inheriting a large amount of challenges. I would say to everybody listening, whether you work for a clean energy company, an advocacy company, now is a perfect moment to bring that expertise. If you live in Virginia, if you have government affairs teams, make sure that you are part of the conversation over leadership for the future of Virginia, because they need to hear from you about jobs you’re going to create, about how you’re going to keep the grid resilient, how you’re going to deal with electricity price increases.
If you have solutions to that and you’re building clean energy solutions to that, now is the perfect time to make sure that those solutions are part of the conversation.
David Roberts
Let’s talk about New Jersey. Similar wins, maybe not as dramatic, but tell us a little bit about what happened in New Jersey.
Caroline Spears
In New Jersey we saw another overperformance. Going into Tuesday, Kamala Harris won that state by 4 percentage points. That was a big question: where are New Jersey voters’ heads at? With a top-of-ticket race — a governor — that really tells you a lot. We just saw a rebound in New Jersey, specifically a rebound for Sherrill, who multiple times throughout the campaign kept talking about the cost of energy, the cost of utility bills, talking about clean energy. I saw a stat earlier today that she cited that over a quarter of her campaign ads mentioned that.
She made this a central focus and overperformed, winning that state and more than doubling the Harris percentages from ‘24.
David Roberts
You had a couple of New Jersey reps you were backing as well.
Caroline Spears
Yes. The other thing going on in New Jersey which was very interesting this year is they used to have — Dave, I don’t want to get too wonky about ballot design.
David Roberts
I love wonky. Get wonky about ballot design.
Caroline Spears
Historically, New Jersey has had this crazy ballot. It’s very hard for incumbents to lose because the ballot is designed in such a way that it doesn’t allow for competition in primaries. Not a very democratic process. They redid their ballot this year and that opened an opportunity for folks to challenge the status quo and challenge the machine in the state legislature. Two victories from Tuesday were really victories from the primary, which is when we got involved because that was the big question: can we, with the new ballot fresh this year, can challengers make it through with the new ballot?
New Jersey elected on Tuesday two climate champions of the General Assembly, Ravi Bhalla and Katie Brennan. They have a forward-thinking vision for traffic and transit and livable communities in New Jersey. That’s what they ran on. I’m excited that they joined the assembly on Tuesday.
David Roberts
Interesting. What’s the balance in the New Jersey Legislature? Does the governor have a majority to work with? How did that settle up?
Caroline Spears
Governor has a majority to work with. That’s why from a climate perspective in the legislature, the play was really about the primary because we knew we had a Democratic majority going in, and it was about making sure that majority was prioritizing real issues for real people that align with making communities livable and climate-friendly at the same time.
David Roberts
The proximate result was there was a big push to get New Jersey to withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the quasi carbon trading system they’ve got there in the Northeast. That’s not going to happen. At the very least, New Jersey is going to stay in RGGI. Be interesting to see what else they can do.
Caroline Spears
What’s funny about RGGI is it’s a permanent boogeyman — have you ever tried running a political campaign on RGGI? People would fall asleep. This is the most boring issue. The Mean Girls line, “Stop trying to make fetch happen.” I want to tell all of these folks who say, “RGGI, we hate RGGI,” stop trying to make—
David Roberts
Stop trying to make RGGI —
Caroline Spears
You think you’re going to get any voters talking about RGGI?
David Roberts
If a voter decided to care and look into it, they would realize that the main effect of RGGI is to get New Jersey a bunch of revenue every year. If you look into the details, it’s almost completely upside. The notion that this is some anchor is crazy. RGGI continues not to happen.
Caroline Spears
I think making our homes more efficient so you don’t—whenever you pay your electricity bill, it’s not thousands of dollars when it gets really cold outside, it gets really hot. I think that’s good. That’s what RGGI funds. I want to see polling. All of these politicians are taking these anti-RGGI stances. Give me the polling on who the heck cares. I think that’s a losing issue to focus on in an election. Especially if you’re going to focus on RGGI. “Oh, hate RGGI this much.” Come on.
When you look into it, it’s all upside for constituents. That’s an interesting thing to focus on. It’s not very focused on kitchen table issues. If you’re running anti-RGGI ads, people see them, “Okay, what is this? How does this relate to me?” On Tuesday, all the candidates who ended with, “We will lower your bill,” it’s much more relatable messaging.
David Roberts
Let’s turn to a race that exemplifies the Climate Cabinet approach in that it is relatively obscure, but a big deal. Talk about Allegheny County in Pennsylvania. What was the race there and why did it matter?
Caroline Spears
It’s not a Climate Cabinet experience if you’re not talking about one race — “What, sorry, where?” Allegheny County, Pennsylvania is in western PA, Pittsburgh is the heart of coal country. There is this fabulous county executive there named Sara Innamorato. She’s a champion, and she now has a pro-climate county council to back her up on air quality and permitting reform. That’s really exciting because she now has the votes to get a lot more done.
David Roberts
I didn’t even know county councils existed until I read about this. What do they do? What do they have power over?
Caroline Spears
County councils are land use and permitting. They’re siting. All this national conversation we’re having around siting and permitting — county governments have a lot of authority over that. They control land use. You’ve had Sightline on, you’ve had these housing experts on. A lot of that is county authority. There’s a lot that county governments can do. They’re one of the most overlooked — county executive, a lot of folks are “What is that?” One of the most overlooked but extremely impactful offices across the country. There are a lot of dynamics in this race.
That was exciting because permitting, air quality permits — those are a big authority. I’m excited about those results.
David Roberts
It’ll be fun to see what they do with that. While we’re in Pennsylvania, we should mention the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. That was a big fight and came out well.
Caroline Spears
Dave, you’re saying, “Let’s really go into the obscure races.” You want to talk state supreme courts, let’s talk state supreme courts. We’re in this national conversation on gerrymandering, and Texas is drawing maps and California’s responding. State supreme courts are where it’s all at, if you care about all this. “Oh, politicians shouldn’t choose who gets to draw the maps.” What are they drawing those maps for? It always gets litigated at the state supreme court. Who controls those state supreme courts is absolutely important. That Pennsylvania victory on Tuesday was really important. Again, we’re always thinking about 2026.
It’s not enough to just take one election. We’re always thinking, what does this teach about what we need to change, what we need to double down on going into next year. It means that North Carolina has state supreme court elections in 2026. Many other states — keep it on the radar.
David Roberts
Pennsylvania, just to be clear, they had a progressive majority in the Supreme Court and it was under attack, under challenge, and they preserved it. Is that what happened?
Caroline Spears
Exactly. It’s a retention election. It’s a little wonky, but you have this guy named Jeffrey Yass and he’s a billionaire. He dumps money into these races across the state. He tried to mount a campaign, but was ultimately unsuccessful. He’s two for two. He tried to dump a bunch of money into a bunch of local races last year and he can’t get it done. Zero for two.
David Roberts
It’s nice to hear that billionaires can throw money at something and it not work. They can’t do just anything they want.
Caroline Spears
We have this long conversation on money and politics, but what we do know is that the candidates who overperform are the candidates who have community support, who knock doors, who get small dollar donations from their actual community of their actual voters. Those candidates are strong and they overperform statistically. It shouldn’t happen, but this is what strong candidates can do and are able to do. That is true. Sometimes you get these people that say, “Oh, I can just self-fund.” Self-funding candidates statistically underperform.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Caroline Spears
That’s some good news about democracy.
David Roberts
It is. That is heartening. Continuing on the obscure tip, Whatcom County Council — is that even how you pronounce it? This is in my state. I should know. Is it Whatcom?
Caroline Spears
Dave, you’re the Washingtonian. Do you call them Washingtonians?
David Roberts
Yes, this is Whatcom County Council, but they are quite significant as well.
Caroline Spears
Really excited about Whatcom County. Washington over the last six years has led the nation on a bunch of important climate pieces. They continue to build that climate majority, not just at the state level, but also at the local level. Whatcom County is another example of that. This is a race where oil and gas got heavily involved. It’s another one of these counties that has siting and permitting, air quality. Call me crazy, I think we should have people who oversee air quality who care about the quality of the air.
They care about clean air. That’s who I want overseeing air quality permits. I don’t want people who are backed by the polluting industry in those offices. That was another great win for a county that cares about clean air.
David Roberts
It’s a port. Whatcom County has a port. This is ultimately about importing and exporting fossil fuels. That’s what the big fight has been about up there.
Caroline Spears
There’s a fossil fuel import/export fight. There’s an oil refinery conversation. That’s a place where, especially if you live around an oil refinery, you really care about air quality permits. The air quality statistics we have around folks who live near oil refineries are terrible. That was a really exciting result as well.
David Roberts
This is another one where there had been some previous victories. This election was mostly about making sure that majority stayed in place. Those victories were defended mostly, wasn’t it?
Caroline Spears
Yeah. Jessica Rienstra won that race. She’s a local nurse practitioner. When you think about public health, having an NP in that seat brings a level of expertise. That’s something I love seeing. Whenever we have someone who runs for a race who clearly has specific expertise in the office that they’re running for. And land use regulation — here we are, we’re talking about it.
David Roberts
What about this Minneapolis thing? Is this worth talking about? What’s going on in Minneapolis?
Caroline Spears
Minneapolis, ranked choice voting. There are a lot of headlines on Tuesday about ranked choice voting. This is a big mayoral fight, and this was a tough race. This is one of the losses from this year. We were excited to back candidates who — Dave, do you want to do a third air use and air quality permit conversation? Because here we are.
There are two things: one is air quality permitting, and the second was land use and walkable communities, that framing. We backed candidates who wanted air quality permits that keep the air quality. We supported a group of candidates who had a vision for Minneapolis around walkability, community-centric. Sometimes people default to these huge roads that cut through communities. It was close. It was ranked-choice voting, which is interesting. That’s a new trend in politics this year — that’s starting to pop up more and more.
It was close, but our candidates fell short on that one.
David Roberts
We should mention a couple other big, high-profile ones. I don’t know that they’re huge, climate-wise, but they’re interesting. There’s the NYC mayor race, of course. Everyone wants to talk about it. I’ve had five separate people pitch themselves to me as the one who can explain the implications for climate of Mamdani’s win. I don’t know that the implications are that huge. He will be implementing some pretty stringent New York City laws that are already on the books about buildings. He can stand up to the governor and defend congestion pricing, stuff like that.
Mamdani’s good. Did you engage in that at all?
Caroline Spears
We did not engage in the Mamdani race.
David Roberts
That was getting enough attention maybe?
Caroline Spears
And when did he stop accepting campaign donations?
David Roberts
I don’t remember.
Caroline Spears
I feel that was months ago. He was building out this grassroots army. He got a lot of attention; it wasn’t an underlooked race. That’s really interesting. New York has a population bigger than most states, so the mayor has a lot of ability to get things done, but he ran on affordability. The theme here is affordability and how are you showing up for people. It’s not about these wonky, “Let’s talk about RGGI,” or —
We definitely saw the folks who won kept it simple and stuck to things people care about. Mamdani is an example of that working really successfully.
David Roberts
I was going to mention the Seattle mayor race, but we don’t know yet how that’s turning out. It’s vote by mail, so they’re getting counted day by day. The latest I’ve read is that Katie Wilson, the challenger, is, if historical trends hold in terms of how the votes shake out day by day — the later votes tend to be more Democrat — she’s on track to win, but that’s still highly uncertain. I did a whole pod with her that people should go back and listen to.
Finally, last individual race I wanted to mention, and I wonder if you have any thoughts on this. What about California Prop 50? I’ve had several people write to me and make the case that this is, among other things, a climate policy. Talk a little bit about what that fight was and how it came out.
Caroline Spears
I don’t think I would classify it as a climate policy, but I would say that Prop 50 — if we want to talk about wonky stuff that has outsized impact, who controls maps and who controls congressional maps has to be on everybody’s mind. Prop 50 is an example of that. The reason Prop 50 passed, I was sitting with our Texas state lead, who’s fantastic. We were sitting in this Senate committee hearing when the Texas state Senate passed their maps and the chair of the committee — look this up — looked direct to camera and said, “We are passing these maps to give Donald Trump five more seats in next year’s elections.”
David Roberts
These guys do not know how to keep the stage directions to themselves.
Caroline Spears
Direct to camera.
David Roberts
They keep blurting what the lobbyists are telling them. They keep blurting it aloud.
Caroline Spears
He did not say, “This is to help represent Texans.” One month before that horrible flood had gone through that area outside Kerrville. That was the summer camp that I went to growing up. That was horrifying. It’s an example of how climate disasters are continuing to impact people. For that to be what he said one month after that flood, I was horrified, sitting in that Senate gallery, hearing him say that. “We are going to do this.” He’s excited.
It’s a priority for him. But it wasn’t about — he explicitly said it is to help the president in next year’s elections, not to help — I didn’t hear in that comment, “This is how it’s going to help the people of Texas.” You want to talk about big impact, that’s the power of a state legislature.
David Roberts
Yeah. Five more votes in the House of Representatives is a huge thing. California is now going to redistrict and squeeze out several more Democratic votes just by tweaking borders and stuff. You and I probably agree—I don’t know how Republicans think about this—but I think generally Democrats in their heart of hearts would love to just have a national law on gerrymandering that makes it some sort of objective, something other than just rank, obvious partisanship. Until that happens, it just seems like this is going to be the cycle, one state after another doing this.
Where do you see this ending?
Caroline Spears
We’re in a situation on redistricting where we have to think about who has the ability to do that. We’ve already had legislation introduced at the congressional level to ban partisan gerrymandering. That needs to get through the House, that needs to get over the filibuster. If leadership in Congress is mad about it, they can pass that legislation today. That’s within their power. That’s what I would like to see the US Congress do. The Supreme Court said partisan gerrymandering is okay.
It’s shocking, also this mid-decade redistricting. North Carolina did this two years ago. This is not a new idea. North Carolina did this 10 years ago. We have seen mid-decade redistricting happen throughout the last two decades. It’s just really accelerating right now.
David Roberts
It seems the norms that were restraining this were not really set in law and norms are crumbling everywhere. We’re moving to a place where every state just goes full hog on hyper-partisan redistricting and that does not seem like it’s going to end well. I heard, and I wonder if you have any thoughts on this, the size of the Democratic wave this year, and I think people are thinking about next year, is so big that somebody was telling me that the Texas redistricting might end up blowing back on them.
They might have gerrymandered themselves out of seats because they were relying on a Republican buffer in a lot of places where it might not exist anymore. Does that ring true to you? I don’t know if you have looked into that.
Caroline Spears
It’s called a dummy-mander, which is the idea that if you make a D +3 district instead of a D +9, in a Republican wave year, you could lose both of those districts. The reverse is also true. The idea for it is a dummy-mander. We have to think about short-term solutions and long-term solutions here. The long-term solution is we can’t go on like this. That’s in the hands of the president and Senate and Congress and the Supreme Court. If they would like to take up that structural solution, they should do that today.
In the short term, we have to think about who are the people who make these decisions, who decides congressional maps, who writes their own maps, and that’s state supreme courts, that’s state legislatures. In 2026, about 23 seats will determine majorities in five states. That’s how tight the margins are in 2026. 2026 starts now. That’s something to really—thinking about who draws congressional maps is incredibly important going into next year.
David Roberts
That’s all the individual races I had, unless there are any other specific ones you want to mention.
Caroline Spears
No, that was very thorough. Thank you. We hit the big ones.
David Roberts
Let’s talk briefly about what this all means. What does it all mean? The biggest question on everybody’s mind is this clearly a wave. Intuitively, it just seems like there’s no reason that this wave shouldn’t continue into 2026. I don’t see anything on the horizon that’s going to make people less mad. I have to fly home on Saturday and I got an email from Delta yesterday saying, “Hey, we may or may not have to cancel your flight. Stay tuned.”
Who knows what might happen, and when that’s going to happen to tens of thousands of people this holiday season, that’s going to tick people off. Prices are going up, grocery prices are going up, the job numbers are terrible. They’ve shut down the job numbers reporting. People have intuited that the job numbers are probably pretty terrible. There’s lots of pain and anger to come. Are you banking on this wave continuing and getting bigger?
Caroline Spears
I think 2026 is going to be a wave year. My expectation is that it’s going to be a bit tighter than the results we saw on Tuesday. When you have Congress and Senate and over 30 governors up, there tends to be more salience attached to it. It tends to equalize which bases are energized. Going into 2026, first big takeaway for how people should be thinking about ‘26: it’s going to be a wave year.
Plan accordingly. I’m not going to say plan for 20-point wins in Georgia. That’s a little too rosy. Don’t tell me “This seat’s going to flip.” Don’t lose your head on it. We can plan intelligently and we can plan with past data and past trends. One of the trends that we’re looking at is — let’s look at trends from Trump 1 and extrapolate that forward. That gives us a lot of information about how to plan. I think that’s absolutely right.
David Roberts
When you say plan accordingly, what exactly does that mean? Does that mean for Climate Cabinet that you are going to put down stakes in some tighter races, some bigger stretches, some stuff that you thought you couldn’t have won a year ago?
Caroline Spears
At Climate Cabinet, what we’re going to do is support 100 Moneyball climate candidates next year. That is what we’re doing. I can’t announce everybody. We have about 25 of them that we’ve already picked out. I’m excited to tell everyone about them. Learning from this year — every election gives us an opportunity to learn and pivot and change. After winning 41 out of 45 races this year, some of which were historically tough, we will be looking at more challenging districts next year. Our thought process on this is the key to accurate predictions next year — we’re focusing less on those swing numbers which dominate news coverage — “Oh, this county swung 30 points this direction, this direction.” We’re going to be looking a lot more at turnout and enthusiasm gaps and that’s really going to drive a lot of our decision making.
David Roberts
Ideally, you would lose a higher percentage of the races you pick.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, exactly.
David Roberts
Because you are trying to push the envelope. You are trying to push on some races that are very close.
Caroline Spears
I want our win rate to go down. If I’m going to be honest, our win rate’s going to go down next year. That’s because we’ll pick a group of folks who are running in really tough districts. We’re going to be looking for more challenge next year and that’s where we’re pivoting.
David Roberts
It’s too early for all this and I’m sure you’ll make announcements, but is there a race or a couple of races, a handful of races that are top of your mind next year? Can you reveal what are the two or three biggest, most important races for you next year?
Caroline Spears
Absolutely. There are two that I want to talk about. The first is these 23 state races that determine five states’ majorities.
David Roberts
You mean 23 races scattered across those five states.
Caroline Spears
Exactly. That is one big goal.
David Roberts
That means flipping those state legislatures. That means flipping them from Republican to Democrat. Wait a minute, 23 races could determine who has the majority in five separate state legislatures?
Caroline Spears
That’s right.
David Roberts
That’s like four races per state.
Caroline Spears
Yep.
David Roberts
It’s wild how tight things are.
Caroline Spears
It’s wild. Those are going to be tough. Folks are already running for those races. That’s truly how close it is next year. We’ve launched our first endorsement of 2026, which is Juan Sanchez for New Mexico Land Commissioner. When you think about what types of races come up, this is a perfect example. Juan Sanchez is a 12th-generation New Mexican, someone who deeply cares about this state. The land commissioner is incredibly important. They control siting and permitting and land use decisions for millions of acres in New Mexico. They have a very important duty — those New Mexico lands actually fund a lot of the public school system in particular, and their preschool system.
David Roberts
Oh, fossil fuel revenue from exploiting the land?
Caroline Spears
What I’m really excited about — this land commissioner is an opportunity to make sure that New Mexico schools are funded for the long term. You need someone with a long-term perspective. The fiscal solvency of the New Mexico education system is incredibly important. What Juan Sanchez is running on and excited to do is, “How do we build more batteries, more wind, more storage, more clean energy to make sure that New Mexico public schools are funded for the long term?”
That’s what he’s really focused on — that diversification, economic benefits. That land commissioner is incredibly important for 2026. It’s not just Juan Sanchez. We will be supporting 99 other people just like him running in these absolutely critical races.
David Roberts
Do you have a candidate that you are backing in that crucial third Georgia PSC race that will determine the majority on the Georgia PSC? Is there someone in that slot yet?
Caroline Spears
Not yet.
David Roberts
What an important person that is going to be. Just to wrap up, I wanted to talk about one thing which is, as you say, the major theme — if you listen now to the Democratic chattering class, the consultants, everybody has decided energy affordability is the thing, is going to be a big focus, state races, national races. Everybody’s got to run on energy affordability. This is what I hear over and over again. But, Caroline, what does that mean? You can say, “Energy’s too expensive and I want to make it cheaper,” which is fine.
At some point, someone’s going to ask you, “How are you going to do that?” What is the Democratic policy agenda to make energy cheap? I worry that the default is build more natural gas because natural gas is cheap. It is going to be very easy for the energy affordability message to get hijacked in a bunch of different ways without a pretty clear vision of what the policy is that is going to make energy cheap. I have not heard much along those lines. Tell me if you have heard otherwise.
Caroline Spears
The overall good news here is that when we think about cost of living, if you care about climate, you now have real solutions to cost of living in a way that we didn’t 15 years ago. You want the cheapest form of electricity onto the grid. That’s solar plus storage. You don’t have to take it from me. You can read NextEra’s investor notes. They publish them on their website. Their investor slide deck is exceptionally clear that the only thing you could possibly build in the next two years is solar and storage.
It takes five years to get a gas turbine. That’s not a feasible solution to today’s electricity price increase. That’s the first piece.
David Roberts
If there’s anything faster than solar and storage, it is existing capacity in households which you can exploit via virtual power plants. Solar and storage you still have to build. The residential capacity is there already. You just have to go get it. You just have to set up a system whereby it can count toward these things, which Volts will have a lot more to say about in coming weeks. Do you think, I hear, I love what you’re saying, but is that — am I going to hear a unified voice from Democrats next year saying, “Solar and storage is the cheapest form of energy. The more of that we have, the cheaper energy is”? I would love to if Democrats across the nation were saying that clearly. Do you think they are? Is that what you think the message is? Is that what you think the national consultants have in mind when they’re talking about this?
Caroline Spears
To be honest, we have a lot of work to do because that’s the truth. Again, it’s not just me saying that. Look up who NextEra is, go Google who NextEra is.
David Roberts
Look what people are buying. Look at the LCOE report.
Caroline Spears
Exactly.
David Roberts
Look at the IEA report. It’s very clear that that’s true. But things being true has limited effects.
Caroline Spears
Exactly. Just because something’s true doesn’t mean that people have heard about it. Just because we live in this bubble doesn’t mean that other people know about it. Without work, we’re not going to see a unified message on it. That’s what I referred to earlier. Everybody, if you’re listening to this, that is our job — to say, “Hey, I know you last checked in on this issue maybe 15 years ago and the electricity market looked real different back then. Welcome. We’re going to have this conversation again. Things have changed.”
It’s absolutely accurate.
David Roberts
It’s accurate, but it runs in the face of elite conventional wisdom and also runs up against the public’s state of understanding about this, which is a decade old. It’s going to take some—you have to weather some slings and arrows. You have to commit to this in the face of a lot of skepticism. I worry that our candidates are not as trained or as knowledgeable about this enough to follow through on it. My worry is, Sherrill in New Jersey ran on a rate freeze — just freeze rates for a couple of years, which is the obvious low-hanging fruit.
Voters understand that, it’s clear, it’s just right there. I’m worried that everybody’s going to go for that. That’s not an answer. It’s a very, very temporary answer for a limited set of people, but that’s not affecting any of the longer-term trends that are pushing rates up. There’s a missing policy agenda behind this slogan. I worry a lot about that.
Caroline Spears
That worry is well founded. I’m just going to be honest about it. That worry is well founded. If the worry is well founded, what do we do about it? If you want lawmakers to be different about this and you’re not in the state capitals, they’re not going to hear you. If a tree falls in the forest, if facts are true over in this corner, but there’s no last-mile communication to make sure that policymakers know about that, then how would you vote on it?
No one has ever done a site visit to say, “Let me take you to learn about DERs and understand VPPs. Let’s do a site visit, meet some of the folks who put this together, who built these things.” There’s an education effort that we have in front of us because it’s wonky and technical. All these state lawmakers are also figuring out how to fund the state’s education system. Famously, they have other things to do. We have to be in the state capitals, we have to be talking to governors’ offices and making sure that we get that done.
To be a little spicy about the affordability piece, I think climate is being a little bit over-fixated on just the electricity piece. If you say affordability is my number one thing, the biggest driver for affordability right now for folks is housing. It’s housing and transportation. As climate, if we want to take on affordability, what we have to do is start with the top of the bill — the monthly bill list — and include electricity. We have to talk about electricity bills.
If we’re not also coming with solutions on housing and transportation and insurance, then saying, “Oh, I care about affordability, but only the fourth biggest item on people’s monthly bills,” I think it’s going to fall a little flat when we’re talking to lawmakers.
David Roberts
In Volts’ world, in my dream world, the message on housing affordability and on transportation affordability and electricity affordability are very consonant. Those are very much part of the same picture. In all of those cases, you’re doing the climate-smart thing that is also reducing prices. You’re building more housing, you’re building more multimodal transportation options, you’re building more renewable energy. All of that is part of the same big story to me. Do I trust Rando, Virginia House Delegate number 12, to understand that story?
I don’t know if I do, but you’re right, because the right is all over this. They know it’s a risk, they know it’s a danger. They have a message right to hand. When you don’t care about what’s true, the message is always right there, which is just, “The kinds of energy we don’t like are the reason energy is expensive.” It’s very easy to blame renewables. It’s very easy and it’s a catchy story. In terms of earworminess and being able to remember it and just according with what are voters’ intuitions, I think voters still vaguely think of renewables as fancy, left, expensive energy. Republicans are going to be pushing on an open door in a sense when they are telling people that renewables are the reason prices are going up. It’s not just that we need a good message. We’re starting on the back foot.
Caroline Spears
There’s a way of reframing. I see a lot of the debate about renewables happening, saying, “It’s not renewables, it’s these other things.” If you’re talking about a bad way to start off on the messaging front, saying, “Listen to my dissertation on why it’s not thing A.”
David Roberts
Did you read the LBNL report that just came out? This big report from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — why are electricity prices going up? Carolyn, it is characteristic. It is extremely wonky and accurate, but the result is it’s political dead weight. There’s no narrative. The answer to why electricity prices are going up is, “It’s a little bit of this, it’s a little bit of that. It depends on this and that. It depends on the region. Some of this, some of that.” The accurate story about why electricity prices are going up is intrinsically complicated and wonky. It’s easy to say renewables are doing it. Telling the true story is hard.
Caroline Spears
You know what’s also easy? You know what’s true and also not too wonky? Don’t ban solar. When you ban solar, it raises your rates.
David Roberts
Yes.
Caroline Spears
When you ban an energy source, you’re just going to say, “No more.” That raises people’s—if you take things off the table, it raises your prices.
David Roberts
Yes, absolutely. This does speak to voters because I do think voters have that all-of-the-above — the all-of-the-above energy thing is very appealing to the average voter. It just sounds right. That used to be used against us, but now it’s Trump and the Republicans very visibly taking options off the table.
Caroline Spears
And sometimes taking half-built projects off the table with offshore wind, with the Department of Interior. We’re in this spot where there’s a federal government clearly driving people to the polls. People are really upset. The fact that they have decided to ban solar, to ban wind, to try to take options off the table at a time when electricity prices are rising for people is a losing political message. Framing it in that order is intuitive. It’s accurate. You’re still not sacrificing accuracy. We’re in a different spot now.
Fastest to grid, cheapest to grid. We have a lot of runway for how that, in turn, helps people’s wallets. Because it’s new, it’s an uphill battle from a communications perspective.
David Roberts
That’s the challenge of the coming year, then. This has been awesome. 41 out of 45. Everything went your way, everything turned out happy. Does not fit in my brain. My brain no longer has open slots for good news. It’s bouncing around in there looking for a place to land. Amazing. Good luck to you this next year, and maybe we’ll talk next November and see, good grief, how things came out.
Caroline Spears
Thanks for having me.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I’ll see you next time.
