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Hello. Hi. Greetings, everyone. This is Volts for November 9, 2026. So how about those midterm elections? I'm your host, David Roberts. If you keep a sharp eye on the news, you may have noticed that there were some elections last Tuesday. They were, to use the newly coined term, a blue nami. Democrats took the House by a more than 30-seat margin. Depending on how the Alaska and Mississippi races turn out, they could end up with 56 seats in the Senate, something nobody, and I mean absolutely no one, predicted. Dems are probably going to end up with 30 governorships, including in every swing state, representing more than 75% of the U.S. population. They went from 16 state trifectas—Governor, State House, and State Senate—to, if Arizona goes their way, 22. And those are just the top-line changes. There's plenty more to discuss further down the ballot as well. It is a seismic result, the biggest and most dramatic political reversal of my lifetime. To explore all of it, I'm happy to welcome Caroline Spears of Climate Cabinet back to the podcast. Caroline's post-election visits—this is her third—have become one of my favorite Volts traditions, and boy, have we seen some shit over the years. We are going to discuss the scale of the Blue Nami, some of the lesser-known state and local races swept up in it, how it might translate to climate and energy policy, what it all portends for 2028, and much more. So, let's jump in. With no further ado, Caroline Spears, welcome back to Volts. Thanks for having me, Dave. Happy to be here. What a day, what a week, what a time to be alive. Caroline, let's start here. I think the audience knows at this point what Climate Cabinet does. You early in election cycles do some analysis, pick some state and lower-level races that you think matter for climate, and then get involved in those races, support those candidates, support those campaigns. So, let's just start here. How many total races, were you involved in this cycle, and how many went your way? Well, I have good news for you and bad news for you, Dave, which is that we were involved in over 120 races across more than 10 states on Tuesday. We won over 100 of them. We lost 10 of them, and we have 10 still too close to call. And the good news is that's a winner, but we have a win rate of over 90%. That seems like pretty good news. That seems like good news. The bad news is that a year ago, I went on this pod after 2025 when we also had a great win rate, and I said, "Dave, we're going to go further. I promised you that we'd try to pick even more challenging races this year so we could keep expanding the map." Yes, because too high of a win rate would suggest that you're not taking enough chances. We discussed this last time, and you said, "All right, next time, we're going to push. We're going to win." Yes, because too high of a win rate would suggest that you're not taking enough chances. We're going to push. We're going to take even bigger chances. We're going to push even harder. Apparently, you just can't push hard enough to get ahead of the Blue Nami. It was wild. Last year, races flipped that were R+10 districts. Historically, that means in the average of the last 10 elections, people voted R+10. And we went further. We went R+16. We also tried a nonpartisan, bipartisan strategy where we supported a bunch of independents. Dave, we took risks that in January— Yes, we took risks that in January—I was looking at our political director saying, "I think we're crazy, but let's do it." Almost all of those candidates won on Tuesday. Crazy, crazy times. So, I know that Climate Cabinet focuses on state-level races and below, not federal politics per se, but just quickly here at the top, let's just check in. Democrats now have more than 250 seats in the House. That was about 20,000 seats in the House. Crazy, crazy times. That was about 25 flips from Republican to Democrat. I think that is the biggest gain in the House since 1990, 36 years ago. Dems are closing in on, they have 54 certain seats in the Senate. There are two outstanding races, Alaska and Mississippi. Mississippi looks like it's going Dems' way. Alaska, I think, is still a little more uncertain, but I think we can agree no one thought 55, 56 senators. No one was saying that. That is not filibuster proof, but flirting with it. Texas elected a Democrat in a statewide race for the first time since 1994. And they elected Democrats in statewide offices in every statewide office. Yes. Every statewide office in Texas went blue. Everyone that was up went blue after no statewide Dems since 1994. Yes. As someone born and raised in Texas, I will say that was my personal biggest shock of the night. I mean, my personal crack rock is watching these reaction videos of groups of people finding out that Tallarico won, and then shortly thereafter, in the following seconds, Finding out that Hinojosa won, a lot of joy, a lot of joy there in Texas. And finally, I'm not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on this, but Keisha Lance Bottoms, very first Black woman ever elected governor in the United States. Gina Hinojosa, Texas's first Latina governor. Becerra in California, California's first Latino governor. Deb Haaland in New Mexico, the first Native American woman governor. Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, the first openly gay man selected to the Senate. Abdul Asayed, the first Muslim senator. Julianna Stratton now joins Lisa Blunt Rochester and Angela Alsobrooks, making three Black women in the Senate at once a historic first. And Hakeem Jeffries is in line to be the very first Black Speaker of the House. So, on top of everything else going on, an extraordinary win for diversity. DEI's back. Oh, my God. Okay, let's talk trifectas. As I said, previous to this election, Dems had 16, where they controlled the governorship in both houses. We are now flirting with 22. Which of those new trifectas did you anticipate and which one are you most surprised by? Well, Dave, back in January, when we looked at the map for this year, we said we think there's five opportunities at trifectas in November with big clean energy and climate stakes. So we thought about Minnesota and Michigan, and those were our two kind of easiest trifecta states on the map. The reason we put them on our map is they passed 100% clean, they passed transportation, electrification legislation back when they had a tractor-tractor. When they lost it, we had to do two years of defense as people tried to roll back every single one of those bills. And Minnesota mainly, you're talking about? Minnesota and Michigan. It was rollback bill, rollback bill, rollback bill. that's been the last two years. We're really hoping to get those back and be able to make progress in building the clean energy economy instead of dealing with all these attacks on the other side. We also looked at Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Arizona, and we said, wow, all three of these look very challenging, but we think they're winnable this year. Let's go ahead and get in early. I would say that Wisconsin was sort of in the water. A lot of other people were also thinking about that i had a lot of people tell me in january arizona and pennsylvania you're crazy you know like i promised on last year's episode we said this is the year to take you know we have to push let's take some big swings big swings yeah let's take some big swings and i was hoping to kind of flip one out of three of those states that was my goal and then all three went historic first dumb trifecta in arizona since 1966 that's what happened on tuesday wild wild and wisconsin i mean all of these individually are amazing stories but just like shout out to ben wickler in wisconsin this long lonely fight to drag wisconsin back from the wilderness has been going on for over 10 years now and just to see it culminate like this is really special I remember I read an article back in 2018 about Wisconsin from a wind energy developer who said we are in a state where we're manufacturing wind turbines in this state and we're exporting them to other states because our state government doesn't because our state government doesn't want us to build those jobs here. Like that's where we were from a clean energy perspective in Wisconsin. Arizona, very same way. Arizona is how I decided to start Climate Cabinet because at the solar company, we were building more projects in Massachusetts than we were in Arizona. It's the sunniest state in the country. And that just shows you how kind of this negative leadership was stifling clean energy and climate ambition in those states. So that's why they were all on the map. I just can't believe that all three of them flipped, to be honest with you. No, but I'm glad, you know, we were there. And Nevada? What? Yeah. Did you see that one coming? I mean, Nevada was interesting because the legislature was already blue. If you had told me one of these four is going to flip, I would have been like, yeah, that's reasonable. Two out of four, I'd be like, well, maybe. Four out of four, glad we got involved in them. Not on my bingo card. Wild, wild. Longtime VOLTS listeners and Vox readers will know, one of my favorite things I ever wrote for Vox was, here's one weird trick to get some good energy policy in your state. And that weird trick is giving Democrats power. So now we have six new trifectas, which, you know, if you were sort of ranking them by their climate and energy policy potential, which one of these do you think is going to really distinguish itself on climate and energy? So if we're just going to start with trifectas, although, you know what, I really want to include Texas in this conversation. Texas, the governor and the state house flipped. State Senate, there was 30 minutes on election night when I was like, I can't believe my eyes. The state Senate was too close to call. The Senate's going to stay Republican where it is. But adding all of these states, they all have incredible opportunity right now. I would say the biggest kind of improvement from baseline, the biggest opportunity that I'm thinking about is really in Arizona. Again, it should be a solar powerhouse, a battery powerhouse. It's starting to build. But they are so far behind their potential in terms of the clean energy economy. Arizona is really on my mind right now. Texas has built a lot of clean energy, but you started to see increasing kind of political culture war motivated pushback against that clean energy in the last few years with Hinojosa as governor and the house. We're in a much better spot in Texas as well for the future and how they continue to build. So those are top of my mind right now. It is an extremely gas heavy state. And Shapiro is sort of theatrically moderate. He's one of these guys that wears a big M on his shirt all the time just to make sure you don't miss it. What scale of action can we anticipate in Pennsylvania? Do you think anything big will come out of there or is this mostly a defensive play? The state that I got easily the most pushback on this year, the Pennsylvania Senate really early this year. I'm talking in the spring. We were talking to candidates, looking through who was going to run a competitive race there and supporting. We started supporting candidates so early this year. And you say pushback, you mean people saying this is pointless. There's no way the Pennsylvania Senate is swinging. Pushback from the political side. There's no way it's swinging. I think a Senate seat hadn't flipped. We had two flips, but they canceled each other out in 24. No, it hasn't flipped chamber control in 30 years. So the political side also got what you said, pushback on the climate side. But here's my affirmative case for why Pennsylvania is exciting. And there's opportunity there this year. I think the first is you have to start with where Pennsylvania is right now. There are bottom five state in the country for renewables. So you look at all of the surrounding states, you have New York, you have Massachusetts, all of these states that are in kind of that northeast area, they produce more of their electricity from renewables than Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania does. It only gets 3%. And they also have enormous opportunities with batteries that they're just not taking advantage of. Because the state Senate has been where clean energy bills go to die for 40 years. Yeah. Yeah. We already had. And then you talk a lot about housing and transportation and how we need to think about those things. It was either yesterday, the day before, this week has felt like a year. Governor Shapiro has already announced that funding for their zero carbon transit and transportation system is on the table and he's going to pass it. It's a top priority for him in the next couple months. So I can keep going to say there's this other thing, there's this other thing. There's a great quote from Senator Lindsay Williams, the transportation chair and a really key caucus leader in the Pennsylvania State Senate. She said, we need to be brave and lead. There are low-hanging fruits, but what are the ambitious and big things we can get done this session? That's her quote about the opportunity next year. Yeah. I mean, to me, this is the big question. You remember when Minnesota first got its trifecta? Yes. They went nuts. They went for it. They were explicit within that caucus telling one another, we have power. We don't know how long we'll have it. Power is for using. Let's do it. Let's go for it. Let's get big things done. That is the spirit. That's what I want to hear. That is the spirit I want. Do you feel like that is the vibe among these state lawmakers in these new trifectas? Like, life is short. Who knows how long this will last? Let's freaking go for it. Minnesota is a great example because before the trifecta in 2022, they had another trifecta about a decade earlier where they went into that trifecta and said, well, we can't overstep. I don't know how much we're going to pass stuff. They didn't really pass that much. And you know what? They all lost re-election the next cycle. Yes. And learned from it. Yeah. I think when voters sent extremely clear message on cost and affordability and how people can show up and deliver for their lives on Tuesday, this is the time for state lawmakers to respond. Voters sent a very intense wake-up call to the entire country on Tuesday. They want big change. Lawmakers who respond to that with ambition and with, I think, are going to see good results from voters, good results electorally. So that's really what we're looking for. People want their costs to come down. You can't bring your costs down that quickly without saying, let's do everything we can to bring costs down. You and I know that clean energy is the best way to do that. You and I know that clean transportation is the best way to do that. So that's the opportunity. I would say that ambition is a little bit different in every state. The dust is still settling now as well. A lot of lawmakers, I think there was a quote, I'm going to lose who said this quote the other day, but he said, I asked a bunch of my friends to run in districts that we thought were unwinnable as sacrificial lambs. called me yesterday and said, so do I still have to go through with this? Hell yeah, you do. Let's go. The dust is still settling, but this is the time. And I think you have Senator Williams in Pennsylvania, you have Senator Lauren Kuby in Arizona saying this is the time to get big things done for people. So you do have individual lawmakers in each of these seats who are pushing for ambition and shaping the conversation. And I think that's really exciting. I mean, you could say going big will be good for you electorally, but I wouldn't even go that far. I would just say that, like, look around you at American politics. Nobody knows what's happening. Nobody knows what's going to happen next. Nobody knows anything anymore. So you have no idea what might work or not work. Nobody has any idea about anything anymore, but you're in office. So like YOLO, for Christ's sake. So, 54% of Americans now live in a state with a Democratic trifecta. That is just an absolutely mind-boggling stat that not a single human being several weeks ago would have dared to predict. Oh, and one other little tidbit about the trifectas before we move on, especially gratifying that in Michigan, the guy in the Michigan House who authored the repeal bill that you were just talking about, the effort to roll back their clean energy law, lost. Yeah. He's gone. A beautiful thing. Oh, and the North Carolina House flipped. What? For the first time since 2010. And, you know, the Senate's still too close to call. There's 300 votes, provisional ballots remaining, for the state Senate of North Carolina as well. No kidding. And who's their governor right now? We have Governor Stein there, Democratic governor as well. So North Carolina could still theoretically join the trifecta? Yes. We don't know. We think the provisionals don't look good enough for that, but we'll see. Everyone listening to this, pay attention. It's getting called this week, you know. wild wild so theoretically it could have seven new trifectas unbelievable unbelievable and in north carolina the legislature controls redistricting it's been one of the most gerrymandered yes north carolina has been ground zero for some of the worst gerrymandering in any state what's supposed to happen is you have a census every decade and after the census you redraw the maps to be apportional. And then you leave it alone for 10 years. That was the way things went. No, this North Carolina legislature loves a mid-district. They try to redistrict every time they can get an opportunity. They've redistricted. Someone's going to know who's listening knows the specific answer. I think twice since the 2020 census, at least, you know, redistrict after the census. And then they redistricted again. It's been multiple times. So they intentionally have tried to avoid accountability to voters over and over again. So the Senate, we'll see what the Senate lands with. Yeah, amazing. I think one of the sort of unheralded kind of background stories here, like you say, Here, like you say, the dust is still settling. Everybody's still picking apart the implications of all this, but I think one of the things going on in the background is a lot of Democratic worries about election shenanigans, especially in 2028, you know, this sort of like worry that Trump wouldn't leave office, worry that they're going to steal elections, worried that they're going to do this and that. We now have Democratic governors in every swing state. So there is a real wall for election integrity, basically, against these efforts to pull election shenanigans. Yes. And remember last year when Trump called a bunch of states and he was like, hey, for the midterms, can you draw me some new congressional districts so I can win a House majority? I was in the Texas State Senate committee when they passed that bill out of committee. And the chair of that committee looked directly into the camera and said, I'm going to win a House majority. I'm going to win a House majority. The reason we're passing this redistricting bill is because we are fans of Donald Trump's agenda and we are redrawing these districts in order to give him a House majority next year. And I think like regardless of the party, it's no way to run a country. And just to say these state legislatures are incredibly important for drawing the lines for Congress as well. And I know we're not mainly here to discuss federal policy, but I do think that like a federal bill is going to be really important. And I think that's going to be really important. And I think something along the lines of every state will be divided based on some objective formula overseen by some objective third party council or group. That's a real possibility now to like just taking gerrymanders off the table for good. You're going to have to get like a constitutional law person on this podcast. I'm going to be honest with you. I think about climate and clean energy a lot. I kind of live in this lane because I track states so much. And I think about how states try to do states and federal and local. There's this constant jockeying and who has power over what. And we've seen some of these states, especially intentionally kind of try to strip power away from cities that try to pass clean energy or climate laws. So I'm really thinking about how states. I mean, you saw it in Tennessee, you saw it in Texas, and it just blew up in their face now. And now they don't have climate laws. They don't have climate laws. They don't have control of Texas anymore. So I think they might be willing, you know, they're like, well, Democrats are controlling 30 states. Do we really want to continue with this gerrymandering free for all? It might not work out for us in the long term if we can continue down this road. So anyway, like that would be truly seismic. But the idea of just gerrymanders being taken off the table entirely is interesting. So let's talk a little further down the ballot. One of the things you are tracking was several utility. Regulator races. Let's discuss those. But first, I wonder, like, it's been two years now of a bunch of nonprofits, groups, advocates kind of pounding the table about PUC elections, about public utility elections. We got Hank Green involved last time. Those races actually got covered on the news, like normies, I guess, kind of sort of found out about them for the first time. Do you think that like people are paying attention now or are these going to recede back into obscurity? Yeah, people are paying much more attention to these public service commission, public utility commission elections than they used to. I would say it's still like that number to go up a little bit. What's definitely true is I was knocking doors in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, one of the swing counties just a few weeks ago. And on the doors, people were independently bringing up their utility bills as a concern. Now, Pennsylvania does not directly elect a utility commission. Right. But utility bills and electricity bills had been on voters minds. We saw that in Georgia. You interviewed Peter Hubbard was on the pod for the Georgia PSC. Peter Hubbard looks like he'll be part of a governing majority on the Georgia PUC as of Tuesday. Yes. So last round, Democrats got two out of the five seats on the Georgia PSC. Now they have three seats, a three to two Democratic majority on the Georgia PSC now. And as you and I know, because we've seen Peter, Peter's been on the pod and we've seen him talk publicly. That guy's got big plans. Yeah. That guy knows where the bodies are buried and he's got big plans. So that's going to be fascinating to watch. Again, also what they can do with alongside a Democratic governor who's not fighting them. Right. Man, Georgia's in for some big stuff and coming. Yeah. And we've seen so many of these PUCs jack up rates for people. And especially one type of bill that I was really tracking over the past couple years is construction work in progress financing. So if you'll excuse me to get a little bit wonky on this for a second. Here's how I think your utility bill should work. When I turn on the light, you charge me for the electricity that I use. And like there's a lot of stuff and how I get charged a lot of details, transmission, distribution, etc. But you should charge me for the cost that it took to deliver the bill. To my house. We have seen some of these utility commissions do and state legislatures pass is they can charge you while they are building the gas plant. They did that with Vodal, didn't they? In Georgia while they were building the Vodal plant. Exactly. And it jacks up people's rates. Repayers were paying for it. Yeah, that's right. And there was a piece of legislation or sometimes they only allow that financing for gas plants. It's not actually available to solar and batteries. So that type of shenanigans. I'm excited to have a lot of people. I'm excited to have a lot of elected PUC leaders who don't do those types of kind of financing shenanigans. Is there a particular thing in Georgia, a particular thing out of the Georgia PSC that you're looking forward to or that you think they're going to do? Or is this going to be a lot of nerdy behind the scenes stuff? It's going to be a lot of nerdy behind the scenes. If you shove Peter, I wonder what it would be interesting to have Peter Hubbard on the pot again. And it's not just Georgia. We have to talk about Arizona. Yes, of course. It looks like we're going to put two seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission, which is, you know, same thing. In Arizona, you had Charlie Fisher on the pod a couple months ago. Yeah, we had a pod about this too. So now DIMS won. It was 5-0 Republicans and now it's 3-2 Republicans, correct? That's right. Only two seats were up this year. So in 2020, we have the opportunity to have a majority on that board as well. This is a race that Turning Point USA got involved in and they lost Salt River Project and they lost Arizona Corporation Commission. They were involved again this round, right? They were. Were they not? They primaried one of the Republicans to put their own person in. Right. I forgot about that. Yeah. That did not go well for them. So Arizona now, blue trifecta and spitting distance from Democratic control over the Arizona Corporation Commission, the ACC. Yep. One seat away. Very big deal. Very big deal. Louisiana is kind of the one that didn't go the way we might like. They went from 3-2 Republican to 4-1 Republican. I'm very curious. Like, there's a lot of data center stuff going on down there. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in New Orleans specifically. I might do a pod on this later. Yeah. I'm wondering why, what's your diagnosis? What happened in Louisiana? Is it just too red? I think Louisiana's red. Even over the past few years in Louisiana, I've had some Republicans cross party lines on clean energy. Mm-hmm. There's new people on there. I'm interested to see where people go with that. I will say that Commissioner Devante Lewis on the board has been extremely effective, and he's been pretty good at trying to create kind of bipartisan solutions and transparency on the Public Service Commission. Voters have sent a clear message two years in a row on electricity bills. This year, they sent an enormously clear message on data centers, and I want to see what Commissioner Lewis and some of his colleagues can. Yeah. Yeah. It hasn't always been voting on party lines in Louisiana. Yeah. I'm interested to see how these new commissioners react to the voters and react to some of the voter anger, and maybe that gives us more opportunity. Yeah. And then, relatedly, also did a pod on this earlier this year, Republicans have controlled all three seats of the Texas Railroad Commission since 1994, and they got a seat this year, which was, yeah, I don't know, among all the other stunning stuff in Texas, quite stunning. Especially, like, that is, you know, people who listen to the pod know the Texas Railroad Commission, very misleadingly named, regulates the oil and gas industry in Texas, and has been just an absolute dark red holdout, you know, from modernity for decades now. So this is like, nobody's paying attention to this race, but it's a very big deal to crack that open. You've had everyone on the pod. How did you predict all of these? Tuesday results. What's going on? I know. I'm immune to optimism, so I didn't actually think all these people would win their races after I talked to them. It must be going on volts. I'm seeing a correlation here. Clear trend. I was thinking about before we got on today, I was like, what is recording this podcast going to be when Dave Roberts is in an optimistic mood in the state of American politics? What are we going to talk about? I'm so confused. I don't know how to act. I don't know. So this Texas Railroad Commission, though, is anything substantive going to come out of that, or is that mostly just kind of a symbolic victory? They still have a two-to-one Republican. They do, but Democrats elected an expert to that seat. John Rosenthal is a mechanical engineer. engineer. He's from Houston. He's worked in the industry. He's very balanced. And he's also an expert level person who I think is going to be able to do a lot of good on the Texas Railroad Commission. I think he's outnumbered on things. And as you said, unprecedented for the Texas Railroad Commission. But I think given John's level of expertise and the knowledge he brings into that seat, it's not like he's starting from square one on the oil and gas industry. He's been in the legislature. He's voted on a bunch of bills about energy and electricity. So he's an expert and I look forward to what he's going to do. Beau French is not a good person. Yes, we should say that Beau French did not necessarily lose because of decisions he made on the Texas Railroad Commission. He mostly lost because he's a racist scumbag. So this was his first time running for the seat. He announced that he was running to stop Sharia law. The Texas Railroad Commission is an oil and gas regulatory body. One of the lesser known powers of the Texas Railroad Commission. Yeah. In addition to kind of the candidate quality and just the moral fiber of the two different candidates running, there was only one person on that race with any expertise or vision or interest in the industry and any sort of knowledge. And honestly, there's a lot of schadenfreude to go around, a lot of ways to point your schadenfreude. But Beau French losing. I mean, if anybody in the nation deserved to be very publicly crushed, it was him. Yeah. I'm still looking. We're going to know a lot more about who voted for who and who split their ticket and who didn't. I saw some initial numbers. And again, I will just say we won't know final numbers for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, depending on the state. Some initial numbers show, you know, I grew up in Houston. Beau French really lost a lot of voters. In the Houston area, there's places in Houston where a lot of Indian-Americans live. And I've already seen some initial data that shows that just people knew about that race. Normally, people don't follow the Texas Railroad Commission race. That sent waves through Texas. He drew attention to it. And you can see the direct. By being a scumbag. Right. You can see the direct electoral outcome of that. And yeah. I mean, I think one of the really interesting questions that we won't have really clarity on for a while. As you say, we don't. It'll be weeks before we know, like, who voted for what and on what and how the split ticket. I mean, I think one of the big questions here, and I'm curious for your thoughts on this, is all these lower races that we care about, the PUCs, Railroad Commissioner, various ballot initiatives, did everybody just get caught up in a blue wave? Do you know what I mean? Like, did a bunch of people just tick the blue box all the way down their ballot? You know, or were there. Like, these lower ballot races, were they just bandwagoning or were there areas where people actually thought about them and voted differently? Yeah. You know, we're going to get a lot more information over the next couple weeks to a couple months. One thing that I am looking at, right, because I'm thinking about 2020 and 2030 and what this means for what we pass and how we build going forward, I am still seeing a little bit of undervoting on our Public Service Commission, Public Utility Commission elections. You mean, fall off people who vote high on the ballot and then just don't mark those at all? Exactly. So, there is still that problem. I think we should celebrate the kind of consumer-focused and clean energy folks won on Tuesday, but just tracking forward, like you said in the intro, people are saying it's the biggest electoral result since Watergate, biggest electoral result in a lifetime. This was such a shocking election. If we are serious about winning these Public Service Commission races in the future, we have to figure out the undervoting. And that's just one thing I'm seeing in the data now that I really want to keep focusing on and working on fixing in 20 and 30. One other little small race that you were tracking, New Mexico Land Commissioner. Yes. Not a wildly popular race or subject of a lot of public attention, but the New Mexico Land Commissioner controls a lot of public land is the significance of it. Your candidate won? Yep. Happy that that was a less competitive race in the general than I thought it would be. I think it's a great race. I think it's going to be a great race. I think it's going to be more competitive race in the general than I was a little concerned about that. I would say like a year and a half ago, we endorsed Juan Sanchez for that race about 16 months ago. Feels like an eternity. Really before we knew what this year would be like, et cetera, the time. So I'm really excited about that. He has made a commitment to open land and open land access for that land commissioner. That's super important. And then also really thinking about New Mexico's public lands generate a lot of revenue for the state. Yeah. Because there's a lot of energy leasing that goes on. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it funds the public school system, et cetera. And so how we can use solar batteries, there's kind of all of these clean energy technologies can start. Interesting. That's something that he's talked about and is going to work on. And I'm really interesting, really looking forward to seeing where that goes. Awesome. Okay. So Georgia PSC Democratic majority, Arizona Corporation Commission, now two out of five won both those races. Two out of five Ds, possible majority in 2028, depending on how things go. Texas Railroad Commission, it's now two to one Republican, but a really good, smart, substantive Democrat in there. And New Mexico Land Commissioner, all happy results in your down ballot choices. Were there any other sort of candidates down ballot that you wanted to call out? We're going to get on to some ballot initiatives. Yeah. We're going to get on to some ballot initiatives and things like that. Were there any other obscure candidates that you were particularly pleased about? Hey there, everybody. Don't worry, I'm not going to tell you about a new mattress or push a credit card on you. This isn't an ad. There are no ads on Volts. It is supported entirely by listeners like you. If you'll indulge me for a second, I'd like to ask for your support. I started Volts because we're all surrounded by depressing news about climate change and misinformation about clean energy. And it's never been more important than that. I think it's even more important to share the stories of the real people on the ground doing the real work of transition and all the ingenuity and courage and public spirit they are bringing to it. People are hungry to hear these stories, to learn from and find inspiration in them. I've heard from people who've changed majors or careers after hearing episodes of Volts, people using it in classrooms and community groups, even state legislators who have passed bills inspired by specific episodes. Sharing these stories is a great way to do it. It makes a difference. If you have found value in it and want to help me continue doing it, I hope you will join the community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. It's about the cost of a cup of coffee a month. If you don't like subscriptions, you can make a one-time contribution, leave a review on Apple or Spotify, or just tell a friend about Volts. I am grateful for any and all support. If you're already a paid subscriber, thank you. And now, back to the show. Any other obscure candidates that you were particularly pleased about? You know, I want to call out two people. I want to call out Trevor Jung, who just won his election to the Wisconsin State Senate. Trevor Jung, his senator-elect, Trevor Jung, very exciting to say, from City of Racine's transportation director. He oversaw the largest fleet of electric buses. He got those deployed in Wisconsin. Now he is in the Wisconsin Senate, the state's transportation goals. Incredible. It's people like that that I get so excited about. It's John Rosenthal, who has actual energy and electricity expertise sitting on that railroad commission board. It's Trevor Jung in the Wisconsin State Senate. You have some candidates who have this incredible track record before they get into office. You also have a lot of candidates who have expertise on other things, but are going to show up to energy and electricity for the first time and say, what is PJM? What is ERCOT? How can I get on board? And so the other thing that I'm really excited about this year is that two years ago, we put someone full-time in many of these state capitals, and we have people on the ground in all of these trifecta states that I talked about, who will be there on day one, working with lawmakers to pass bills that lower costs and cut pollution every single day. We're going to get back to what those might look like at the end, but that is obviously the real win here would be something coming out of this. Trevor. And then, you know, JKT winning in Alaska, I think is really exciting on the governor's side. That's a state in an energy crisis. What he can do for distributed energy resources there, for wind energy resources there to bring costs down, I think that's a generational change in Alaska as well. So I would just want to call out Trevor Jung in Wisconsin and JKT, incoming governor of Alaska there. And they called the Alaska governor race. That's a done deal now? AP has not. AP has not called this race. So, okay, maybe I'm a little too fast on it. I would say I feel good about this race right now. We'll see. Trevor. Yeah, again, not something a lot of people would have predicted. Okay, let's talk about data centers. I think there were something like 40 ballot initiatives or measures or various things that people voted on that were banning or putting a moratorium on or in various other ways, punishing or cracking down on data centers. I think. Almost all of them won, like all, but I think one or two passed. Like it was the message about data centers from the public was, let's say, unequivocal. Loud and clear. Were you involved in any of those? Are you just candidates or do you also get involved in ballot initiatives and things like that? So we were not involved. We were tracking those data center ballot initiatives. We were not involved in ballot initiatives this year. But I will say that on the door, all 120 plus candidates we supported this year, we talked to them all saying, kind of, here are ways that climate can lower costs. What really stands out to you? And almost all of them said data centers. It was the most unanimous response I've ever seen from doing this work over five years. And these were not ambiguous results either. Like in Asheville, Ohio, there's a data center already under construction. 80% of people voted to stop construction. In Juliet, Illinois, same thing. About 80% voted. About 80% voted to restrict data centers. So that's not partisan. That is not a one side or the other thing. Extremely bipartisan issue. One other statistic is 20 of 36 governor's race candidates, 20 out of 36 promised some kind of moratorium when they are elected. The other thing is Elon Musk spent about half a billion dollars backing pro-AI. and pro-data center candidates and did not have a good night. Do you have the numbers on how many he lost? Not specifically. I would like someone to assign a full-time researcher to just charting the scale of Elon Musk's absolute farcical faceplant at this election cycle. There's so many aspects of it. That's one of my favorite areas of schadenfreude. Just on data centers, we'll get back to this when we talk. But this is just a worry I raise. And I'm curious if you saw anything out there. If you share this worry, this is something I've raised a bunch of times. But the sort of stampede of hatred against data centers and against AI, do you worry at all that clean energy projects, that transmission projects, solar fields, etc., are starting to be viewed as adjuncts to data centers? That they are getting lumped in and people are going to start hating all of it and fighting against all of it. Are you worried at all about that effect? Well, we already saw some of that start. And earlier this year, we had some opposition against battery projects. They happen to look kind of like data centers. Some of that is already in the water. I remember when I was in the solar industry, we had someone show up to a. a town council meeting and say, I don't want solar here. This was a science. Someone who was a science teacher in the area who said, I don't want solar here because it's going to suck up all the sun. So we do have. A science teacher, you say? A science teacher. Yeah. I mean, you're talking about having someone in the state capital of all these new trifectas to do education. I surely would hope that that's on your agenda. Just helping lawmakers pick, these things apart, helping lawmakers distinguish and not just have this turn into an anti-electrification sort of mob sentiment. Yeah. Well, the only thing I'll say that against that a little bit is that data centers, like we've seen NIMBY fights against clean energy. Sure. Yeah. Those are not new. Right. Those aren't new. That's not going 80/20. I mean, data centers are a popular 75/25. Data centers are. Next level, there's been some interesting coverage on this. It's not just that it's unsightly, even though it is. And it's not just about the noise, even though that's part of it. Data centers are a physical manifestation of economic anxiety that people have around AI. And you have leaders, many of these companies going on a podcast and saying, we think this is going to take a bunch of people's jobs and it also, some people might die. Yes. And it might also drive us to extinction, P.S. Right. So. I will say that that's the big difference in driving some of the opposition. And then people see, oh, there's a physical manifestation of that happening near me. I don't think that's something, that's a PR problem that I'm not in charge of. Yeah. I do think data centers have become a stand-in for basically like modernity, like everything people are uncomfortable with that's going on in the world today. You know, income inequality and this sense that there's a tiny cabal of dudes in one neighborhood in California that are determining the fate for the rest of us. And we have no control over it and we have no feedback mechanisms. So, like, this is the only thing that people can grab onto and say, hold on now, you know what I mean? And yes, thankfully, we don't have to solve that. But just like being aware of consumers. And popular sentiment. Always good to do. I do think, like, differentiating the two industries, I think the clean energy industry has been on this for a while. We have work to do. Some of the battery stuff is a problem. Whoever is on that PR team, thoughts and prayers. That's a challenging job right now. But I think the opportunity is, you know, we live in a democracy. People have power and the ability to send a message on things. Like, what creative opportunity does this open up for people to say, hey, here's what we can. Actually provide to communities. Here's how we're going to show up differently. Because the way people have been showing up so far and having elected officials like NDAs. Yeah, that's crazy. So there's just needs to be a complete rethink of how to approach community engagement. And I think that's an opportunity here. Surely this will. I mean, if anything can get through to these guys, I know they live in a bubble, but like this is so unequivocal. The message here is so unequivocal. Surely this will spur some thinking in those circles. I just think there's a way to. Build data centers in a way that actually makes people's lives better. And I would like to see more of how that can happen in the future. Oh, okay. Let's talk energy ballot measures. There's some interesting ballot measures under the surface. Didn't get a lot of attention, but very interesting in Michigan. Yes. Prop two. Talk about that a little bit. Prop two. Fascinating example of this kind of two year anger over costs. And utility bill is increasing prop two in Michigan, Dan's Michigan utilities from putting money in politics. Yes. And it passed with, I think the last number I saw, 84% of the vote. Talk about a bipartisan issue. I mean. Riding the anti-corruption wave, I think, tapping into that. Yes, totally. And it's a great anti-corruption bill. It looks like it's already under a legal fight. I think the utilities are going to put it in. So the work does not stop here. But just to say that prop two passed with over 80% of the vote, that almost never happens. It's a very clear message. Yes. And this is one thing where I hope other states are paying attention. I hope this is a policy I would love to see spread. It's already a little crazy how we run utilities. I don't have to get into that again. But like the fact that they're publicly guaranteed profits, but we still allow them to lobby and bribe lawmakers for their own private interests is insane. It's insane on its face. It's crazy that we allow them to do that. So the public in Michigan has spoken very clearly. They're not into that. And there's no reason other states can't follow suit on that. Yes. And there are some states can pass it through ballot measure. Some states have already put this bill up in the legislature. It's gotten killed in a lot of places. I'm very interested in the legislatures who carries this bill next year because that's a big opportunity for the same reason. A lot of big changes in state legislature. So, yeah, when I turn on the lights, which I shouldn't pay for somebody else's political contributions, the same reason as every, you know, that's ridiculous. Yes. And the fact that it fails in legislatures to me is just like evidence of the need for it. Right. Like utilities can exercise their influence in legislatures sufficient to fight off bills that have 80 percent public support is sort of like evidence that they have too much political power right there. Yeah. So good job, Michigan. Colorado. Colorado. Colorado. This was, I think, what was intended to be by the gas industry, the first of many. They put a ballot initiative on the ballot. Very short. Just says Coloradans have a constitutional right to natural gas, basically. Right. A constitutional right to be able to choose natural gas. Basically taking. Taking the idea of a gas ban or even, you know, anti-gas policies off the table. It failed. Yeah. Do you have the numbers on that one? Yep. Numbers on that one. It failed about 55 to 45. Oh, interesting. Interesting. That's reasonably good. Not quite as decisive as data centers, but reasonably good. Nothing is as decisive as money out of politics, anti-corruption and data centers. I mean, on Tuesday, that was clear. Yeah. Obviously, the gas industry is not going to go quite into that good night. But do you think this takes that particular tool off the table or you think they're going to keep trying that? You know, we'll see. I'd be interested to see if this ballot measure pops up in other places. This is certainly something that's introduced legislatively as well as we think about state power and what states, legislatures and governors can do as well. So I'm interested to see kind of where this goes broadly. But listen, we have a lot of rights in this country. We have a right to vote. We have a right to free speech. I don't know if the founders intended that particular right. Yeah. Is that originalism? I don't know. I can't tell. Something the founders had on their mind? I don't think so. Thou shalt get thine methane. Okay. The only other one that I have on my list here is Ann Arbor, which was interesting. So, you know, once again, had on the pod, the woman from Ann Arbor talking about their clean energy utility that they've created in Ann Arbor. Very interesting thing. Unique in the nation, as far as I know. Sort of like a second utility alongside the main utility, the entire purpose of which is to fund and build clean energy. The ballot initiative was to fully municipalize the main utility, which I guess would then involve getting rid of the second utility. Unclear. That didn't go through. Do you have any thoughts on that or thoughts on utility municipalization? Or making utilities public in general? Yeah. So the Ann Arbor ballot measure failed by about 3%. So very split results. Very interesting. Generally, I'm going to give perhaps a wonky answer to this, which is that when you think about public power, private power, munis, co-ops, all of these different pieces, we've been involved. We track a lot of these because we think a lot about utility boards, Salt River Project, things like that. Really, here's my wonky answer. It all matters on government capacity. We have a lot of kind of cities in the country that have public power on paper, but they're so small that they don't have the technical capacity and staff to sign complex energy contracts with multinational companies. So it does create a power imbalance sometimes if the city is too small, or the city says they want this thing, but they don't staff it appropriately. So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And some municipal utilities are doing great, and they're going forward on electrification, all of these things. When I think about climate and clean energy, I don't see a big difference between these different types of structures of electricity utilities. I do see a big difference when it comes to kind of oversight, transparency, and responsiveness to people's rates and responsiveness to results. And so you can have a public utility like TVA that has high responsiveness. And so you can have a public utility that has high responsiveness, and it's jacking people's rates up for it, because they have a cultural reason to keep coal online, even though other cheaper opportunities are there. And you also have private utilities. We just talked about some of these monopoly utilities, they're investor owned, and they're putting, you know, they have this blank check to put money into politics, and that's not acceptable either. So we need accountability and transparency on these utilities. Just because it's a municipal utility doesn't mean it's accountable to people. So we talked about, okay, should we do this? Should we do this? Should we do this? Should we do this? Should I go one more level of detail? Or is it too wonky? Sure, go. Okay. Please. So we talked about some data centers having local officials sign NDAs, which is ridiculous. That sometimes happens with municipal utilities too, where the city council. We should just say, in case anybody doesn't know, an NDA is a non-disclosure agreement. It means legally you can't talk about it. Yeah. And I think when a publicly elected official makes an agreement on behalf of their constituents, they should be able to tell their constituents what that agreement is. But we have municipal. Yes, one might think. One might think. We have municipal utilities that have signed non-disclosure agreements on long-term power contracts that their voters have to pay for. Wild. Wild. And some of the worst examples of this are all of the municipal utilities signed up for Prairie State Coal Facility in Illinois that has over 100 public power agencies are signed onto that. So there's a few examples of public power kind of being captured. All I'm saying is transparency, accountability, keep, clean. That's what voters are asking for. And getting too married to one structure or another, I'm not. That's where we are. Yeah. That's probably for a separate pod. And I'll just say, selfishly, I'm so curious about how this clean electricity utility in Ann Arbor is such an interesting experiment to me that just sort of like selfishly, wonkily, I'm curious to see how that plays out, how it performs, how it goes. Whereas like trying to municipalize, you know, like it's fair, very expensive. It takes a long time. I mean, I should do a separate pod on this, but. That'd be fascinating. That'd be a really interesting, that'd be a really interesting pod. Yeah. There's lots of ins and outs. Other ballot initiatives. Oh, I didn't want to mention Eugene, Oregon voted for a clean energy fund, paid for with a fee on companies with $1 billion or more in national gross profits. So I guess your Walmarts, your big box stores, basically. Interesting, I guess. Any thoughts on that? I don't know. I don't know how significant it'll be in Eugene, Oregon. I mean, it's not like, you know, it's a small town. Not when I was tracking on Tuesday. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see if that goes anywhere or if there are any negative consequences. It'll be interesting to track. Let's see what else. Oh, Arizona has, there was an initiative that would implement a constitutional ban, a state constitutional ban for miles driven. Oh my God. You know, it's so dumb. You know, there's this idea floating around, how do you replace the revenue from gas taxes as we electrify transportation? And there's a lot of discussion of various ways of taxing miles driven rather than the type of car or the fuel. You know, it raises privacy issues. There's all kinds of ins and outs of that. But apparently, you know, I didn't actually look into this much. I didn't actually know who's for that. Like who's trying to pass that? Did you track this one at all? I did not track this one. This is interesting. I'm looking it up right now. I wonder if it's the automakers, if it's the automakers or like the gas companies, like who's after that anyway? I know. Right now at 50.7%. Yes. I don't think it's been called yet, but it may well pass, which would just be like, just so dumb. That's probably also a separate pod, like how to fund transportation with gas tax. Decreases. Yep. Declining or how to tax miles driven in a privacy respecting way. They're doing interesting stuff on that in Denmark, by the way. Okay. That's the ballot measures that I had on my list. Any others are at least the energy related ballot measures I had on my list. Any others? You know, you covered a lot of them. So there were some very interesting transit funding ballot measures, kind of across the country. We're moving to housing and transit next. Oh, fabulous. Okay. We'll talk about housing and transit. This is our next big bucket. As everyone knows, as I pound the table and say constantly, housing and transit are huge pieces of the climate puzzle. If you are a climate activist, if you're interested in decarbonization, you need to get involved in housing and transit. I won't go through all that again. Volt's listeners have heard it a hundred times now. So let's briefly look at what happened to housing and transit in the election. I think the big story there is LA mayor. Were you involved in that race at all? Better Streets PAC is who you should talk to. We did not get involved in that. Better Streets PAC did. Very exciting result for housing and transit there. Amazing. Ramon, hardcore Yimby, left of center Yimby. And Bass was classic left Nimby. And this is a city where these fights are very top of mind. So that's huge. I think it's huge for what it signals. And also, I think it's just like Ramon is already talking about amazing, doing amazing things. So like that's going to be huge for transportation in LA. There were several ballot initiatives to raise taxes to fund transit. I think all of them passed. It looks like almost. Yeah, I have. I'm a transportation policy lead on the team and I'm reading his overview right now. It looks like we passed almost all of the measures that we were tracking. There's one or two that are still too close to call. I think the big things on housing and transit, I mentioned Trevor Jung in the Wisconsin State Senate. Major trifectas one will open up huge opportunities for us to go above and beyond without getting so, so, so wonky here. For example, in Wisconsin, there has been a lot of statewide ban on innovating on how to build zero carbon public transit in a way that serve people well. So we have huge opportunities at the legislative level and city after city after city past kind of dedicated revenue streams for housing and transit. Very good. Including my own home city of Seattle. Yep. Past prop one. It's just going to, I think they're saying basically the biggest expansion of transit service. In decades here in Seattle, ton of money that passed by 70% in the Bay area. There's a regional transit measure, about a billion dollars over the next 14 years. That passed easily. So it seems like when it comes to taxing themselves to pay for transit, people are into it. Yeah. I think two things are happening. Tuesday was a cost of living election, and gas prices are so high that I think that really boosted interest in people need affordable ways to get around. Let's put transportation choices on the table, cars, and let's have transit that's accessible to people. So we're yes anding our transportation options. The gas prices are just so high. So I think it really drove up the interest in a lot of these because people need options and people need choices. So that's really good. I'm excited about the housing stuff. The other thing is the federal government. Wait, one other thing I want to say on the housing, which is some of the measures that are not about transit but are instead about zoning and related. Things did not do as well. So, for instance, in California, there's Prop 45, which is trying to remove the burden of sequel reviews to California Environmental Quality Act. You know, this is like the state version of the NEPA fight, removing sequel reviews basically from big housing and transit projects, not from fossil fuel projects explicitly, just from housing and transit projects that is on track to lose. I think I will say that California legislatively. Already removed some sequel burden on infill projects, which is good as well. And then there was in Massachusetts, one other one I wanted to call out. Question seven in Massachusetts was basically by right ability of homeowners to build on small lots because a lot of towns sort of mandate large lots as a way of keeping out density. That is, I think, still not been called. I think it's a coin flip at this point. So very, very close. Those are the others on housing that I had. Any other notes on housing? No, those are good notes. At the risk, Dave, of just going back and forth and agreeing with each other too much. I'm really excited about all of that housing report. I know. Yeah. I'm like, I don't even know what to say other than should we just all agree on the housing and transportation stuff? We've lost the sense memory of good news. We don't know what to do with it anymore. Clearly, our bodies and brains are so unaccustomed to it. We don't know how to handle it anymore. Yeah. And housing also, thinking of kind of these new governments, housing also something that Governor Shapiro said was on his first list. Yeah. It's spreading through the states. Like the state trifectas are taking action and everyone that does it, especially, I mean, I've done a couple of pauses on this, bipartisan. There are some red states doing amazing stuff on housing too. So like this is, I think, an area that's gaining momentum. And all these new trifectas, I think, are going to do amazing stuff on housing. It's going to be fun to watch. Yes. We're all following in Montana and Oregon's kind of leadership on some of those housing pieces. Yes. So let's discuss. Here's a worry I have. Yeah. All this good news and happiness. I got to find something to worry about. So here's what I'm going to worry about. Okay. As you say, this was a cost. Of living election. I think everybody agrees on that most visibly this dumb ass war that drove up gas prices and diesel prices, which are prices that everyone sees every day. I think that explains a lot of the scale of what's going on, but you know, electricity bills were a big part of that too. And so now you've got is wave election. You've got Democrats moving into control over lots of states. Lots of legislatures, lots of cities. Now they're going to be called upon to bring down costs. Yeah. That is why they were elected. And my worry is that there are just lots of structural things going on, pushing energy costs up and States can take the edge off of it. You know, States might be able to blunt the increases, but I'm just real worried that there's just not. Really like an obvious or easy way. There's not a tool laying on the table that they can just pick up that's going to allow them to bring down costs. So like what can States do to bring down energy costs and can they do it in a visible and dramatic enough fashion to break through to the electorate? Because, you know, like what I see is here. There's another worry is just that like the American people are just pissed. And so like when you're out of power, that works very well to your advantage because they're pissed at your opponents. But like when you get in power, then they're just pissed at you. They're just pissed at like they pissed and they're demanding big things. And I don't know if there are things to give them big enough and obvious enough and effective enough to. Satisfy the sort of fury that's out there. So anyway, like what do you think states can do to bring down energy costs? Yes. All of these people who've been elected on Tuesday have an enormous and a very urgent need to deliver. I think a great example of this is no. Where is this more urgent than Alaska? The cost increases in Alaska are some of the worst in the country. And there will be an immediate ask to bring those prices down. I'm seeing things like 22 cents a kilowatt hour. We have MMBTU prices in Alaska that have doubled, tripled in the last year. In a single year, tripling a price in a single year. It's unsustainable. I think there's a few places where states can act very fast. The first is making sure that people have abundant access to distributed energy resources. There's a lot of ways that states have put controls and held that back. Some of that is to do with monopoly utility control. Big opportunity. Next year. I want to see virtual power plant legislation in every state. That's something that Senator Kuby in Arizona is already saying publicly. She's putting that on the table next year. I want to see community solar on the table. Just personally, I want a balcony solar mod. Get me a balcony solar mod. Every state should be passing that. Behind the meter, batteries, distributed energy, I think is having a moment, is going to have a moment next year. Because it's something that can move out quick and people can get on that fast. Can we get a shout out for permitting? I know that there's a certain quarter of the left that sort of recoils at the idea of removing regulations, deregulating something. But there's just the thicket. The federal permitting bill is one thing. We don't have to get into that. But there are all these state permitting, state environmental laws, local permitting laws. States have their hands on a ton of that stuff. I would love to see some real attention on that. So much of that isn't state power and state authority. We're thinking. We're thinking about how we can. I will say that we have plans on that and a few states for next year. I think this is a big place states can lead to get power online as fast as possible, especially with these electricity cost increases. We have to bring cheap power online very fast. This is also, you can think about, you know, grid utilization legislation, battery legislation. And what we have to do simultaneously is we have to do things like legalize and fill housing. We all know that. With interest rates at seven and a half percent or so, it's going to take a while for that to come online. So what we need to do is stack our medium term, our long term and our short term because people are asking for lower costs today. So we have to do a little bit of everything. But keeping that long term focus as we do a near term kind of relief as well. I think it's going to be a challenging balancing act for a lot of these states. But one where if they lead on it, they can do good things. I mean, think about a public service commission. You can remove the cap on rooftop solar. You can change net metering so that people actually are paid back for the value they contribute to the grid. There's all of these pieces that I think change the ways you accredit batteries. There's a lot of wonky stuff that can be done. You know, we already talked about data centers, but of course, like data centers are rich. They're in a hurry, as I've said a million times. Get them to pay for stuff. Amy Acton in Ohio, who just won the governorship, has said. She wants to pass a moratorium on data centers unless they cover 100 percent of their utility costs. So deep pockets, eager to get on the grid and willing to pay for grid upgrades. I won't pound this table again. I'll just say, like, I think a lot of people think there's a bubble. A lot of people think the bubble is going to pop at some point. What I keep saying over and over again is let's get useful policies passed and useful steel in the ground. Yeah. With their money. With their money before the bubble pops, because that stuff will last. That stuff will still be there after the bubble pops. So, like, make data centers pay. And I love that you brought up battery capacity rules. Batteries are undervalued. And a lot of how our states have written the regulation, we need to value batteries for what they're doing with the grid right now. It's incredible. Battery capacity rules, number one on any lawmakers list. And some states, they can't do that because they're part of PJ and they're part of these larger markets and other states. I'm looking at. I'm looking at Irkut, I'm looking at Alaska. That's within a state's control. on the state you live in, but there are some governors who can really go full steam ahead. And I think there's enough good, right-thinking governors in PJM now that they can team up and force some PJM reform too. That ought to be on the docket. The other side of my worry on this is that the amount of pressure, like there's a ton of pressure on this and there's a lot of new legislators and new governors who don't necessarily have deep knowledge of the tools available to them. And I think they're going to grope for whatever looks easiest and fastest and most visible. And that is going to lead to a lot of sloppulism, as they call it. A lot of just like, we're going to freeze rates or we're going to suspend the gas tax for a year. Stuff that does nothing for the long-term energy picture. If anything, just increases the problems over time, but looks like you're doing something. I worry about a wave of sloppulism coming. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Just know that the short-term fixes are not going to solve even the medium-term needs, looking out two years into the future or the long-term. That'll be the challenge of every new lawmaker is people need short-term. Combine it with medium and long-term. Otherwise, we'll just end up right back here every time. How many times have you said, I'm suspending the gas tax in this? You put your entire transportation budget in a hole. People can't fix potholes in a couple of years. If you need to do it short-term, that's fine. Combine it with a long-term fix. That's the big challenge. And I would say, man, a lot of people got elected on election night that we were not expecting. Dave, I had a lot of candidates. I will say, for example, there's candidate Ebony Turner in the Dallas area, R plus 16 district. I told you we would stretch harder this year. So we put a bunch of districts that were R plus 16, R plus 18 districts on the map. I thought, maybe two out of 10 will win and it'll give us an indication of candidates who are really strong or maybe some interesting areas. All of them won. And all of those lawmakers, you bet. R plus 16, wild. R plus 16. There have to be a lot of new lawmakers now who are like, wait a minute. Like I didn't, you know what I mean? Like I didn't think I was actually going to have to be a state rep. Well, and think about who texts them the day after they win election. They have a lot of new best friends. Yes. And kind of now until January, there's a sprint now too. Yeah. Get in their ears. Interesting. Well, I was going to ask, maybe you already answered this, but just like, what do you think is the single most important thing that all these new majorities need to get right next year? And it sounds like this blend of short-term relief with middle and long-term reform is kind of your answer to that. Yeah. Yes. Electricity short-term. And also we need kind of utility regulatory reform to make sure that the fact that we've ended up here with electricity, electricity rates is a sign that there's a national problem. Electricity. And the second thing is that we need to get right next year. So we need to get right next year. And the second thing is really is transportation. With gas prices this high, big focus in transportation and housing. And how do we make that? It makes it if it works for people. We haven't really talked about EVs. Yeah. EVs are in a weird spot where the empirical circumstances are all lined up. There ought to be a stampede happening right now to EVs, but it's basically been suppressed by policy and automakers and idiot U.S. policymakers and the polling's not good. Weirdly, like EV mandates poll very poorly for reasons I don't fully understand. I wonder what if you think there's going to be a turning the corner type of moment on EVs coming. I think we will see that. I think that the long-term picture on EVs is very clear. The short-median term is very messy. Right now we're at kind of a local minimum of EVs. The interest, but I think the state federal policy landscape, I'm very interested to see what the new Senate and House do, especially with tariff policy with EVs. The state policy landscape, there's some things we can do. I was talking with Governor Inslee on Wednesday who talked about how states can pass EV leasing. I think that's really interesting. Like try it out. If you don't want to pay that much at the pump, try out an EV. That's an interesting idea. But state policy on EVs has been in a funk since the California waiver has been tied up in lawsuits. So basically states used to be able to pass more EV policy than before. And then Trump sued that ability and we're waiting for, that's, we're in court. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Yep. Okay. We're over time predictably, but to wrap things up, I would like to take a little look at 2028. How dare you? David's been just a few days. Okay. I know. Obviously 2028 looks a lot different now than it did. Six weeks ago. Let's just say it's been put in a new light. You know, I guess the big question is, do we look at what just happened as a gathering wave, right? That will continue through 2028, or is this a short-term backlash to Iran and high gas prices that will subside when Iran, whenever they figure that out, whenever that solves itself and gas prices come back under control? Just what is your vibe check for 2028 at the moment? Any pundit who tells you, I know what's going to happen in American politics. No, no kidding. Is full of shit. Yes. True. Yeah. So what I'm going to say is. Nonetheless, do so. Yeah. So let me opine on what I think is going to exactly happen. With that said, here's my BS. Oh my God. Let's plan for both. We need to plan for both. It needs to be on paper. Let's do it. So we have to plan for next, and we also have to plan for the whole mood switches. And both of those plans need to be on paper and they need to be written. And we need to execute against both plans in the next two years. Because one of those plans is the wave builds on itself. We take these state majorities and these governors who passed all this. Let's like do two roads diverge in a yellow wood. So we've got one world of this is it's the end of 2027. 16 governors have announced president and they say, I brought down your electricity bill and I got you a battery and a solar on your roof that you could cap independence from the grid. And we lowered the cost of transportation and we passed functional transit systems and we passed housing. And that's one race to the top in 2028 because they passed all this incredible legislation in 27. And then they gain seats in all of these places. That's on the table. Let's take that seriously instead of being so scared. It's hard to take optimism seriously. We have to take that seriously and plan for that. The other side is, okay, it all goes the other way. You know, every seat that was gained is lost. We still have a plan for that. Let's execute it. And we have to write both down. Or maybe not all of them lost, but like some reversion to the mean, basically. Some reversion. Like it's not, I don't think we can just assume that our plus 16 districts are blue from now on. You know, like, I don't know. Maybe I'm just immune to that level of optimism, but like, it seems like there's going to be some reversion. On the specifics, the Arizona Corporation Commission could get a dim majority in 2028. There are fewer governor races than in 2026, but are there particular governor races in 2028 that you have your eye on? You know, 36 governors were up this year. This was the governor year. I know, that's wild. I know, it's super, it's crazy. 36 governors were up. You know, I will tell you right now, I have not looked at the list of governors that are up for 28. But what I have looked at is the list of state, some not, you know, we have all of these staggered terms when it comes to a public service commission, public utility commission, and a state senate, which are the ones that go four or six years. I have looked at all of those maps. So we already know kind of which seats are in play on 28. And the POCs, the weird statewides of the world, and then thinking about state power and state control. So those are interesting. I would say, for example, the Pennsylvania Senate map, to get extremely detailed about this, the Pennsylvania Senate map looks even better in two years than it did this year. So that's just one thing to keep in mind for two years from now. It feels almost greedy to ask, but like, are there other states that could flip other trifectas on the horizon? Like we sort of got like everyone I can imagine getting, are there any other states you can imagine flipping? I mean, I can't believe we're sitting here talking about this. We're talking about Mississippi, South Carolina. I saw this, just throw this stat out. I saw that the average shift in pro-Trump South Carolina counties was 21 points. The average in South Carolina, just wild. So like, are there other states that might flip red to blue in 2028? Here's what I'm thinking. So I'm going to tell you about a thing that happened on Tuesday. The North Carolina House flipped. The Senate, as of this recording, did I already say this? It's been a long week. I can't remember what I said twice. Did we already talk about North Carolina Senate? It's not called yet, or it's still close? Here, let me say it like this. There are three states that I'm thinking about on the state legislature front that I think, you know, we talked about having two plans that are on the let's keep going plan. We've got the Georgia Senate, the Texas Senate, and the North Carolina Senate, which as of this recording is too close to call. There's only 300 votes that will dictate whether Dems flip the Senate as well. Voting matters, everybody. Voting matters. Yep. Yes. Even in a year like this. I mean, we have about 10 seats that are still too close to call right now. We have a seat in Pennsylvania that's 45 votes between one and the other. Here we are. Wild. So North Carolina Senate could flip? We have to put that on the map. That's absolutely on the map right now and could flip this year, but I'd put that on as well. I would also put the Texas House back on that list. We are going to see, I believe, some reversion from this. We have to put the Texas House back on the map. All of these Wisconsin and Arizona seats, I would absolutely keep those, you know, under consideration for 28 as well. Are there particular PUC elections in 28 other than the ACC that we need to keep in our head? We'll come back on Georgia because it's staggered. ACC is really on the list. And, you know, we have to track Louisiana and Montana over the next few years. I think that's really interesting to see what type of policy comes out of it. I'm just so curious about Texas. You know, like, they don't want to lose that one. If those electoral votes become reliably blue and, like, Democrats reliably have Texas and California in presidential races, that's going to make it real hard for a Republican to win as president for a long time. So I think they're really going to go nuts trying to get Texas back. Trying to get the House back. Trying to make Hinojosa look as bad as possible. That's going to be so many fights in Texas in the coming two years. Yeah. And so important for clean energy and climate as well. So Texas on my mind. All right. Well, I think we covered everything. What an amazing year. Nothing I've ever seen quite like it. And gosh, we're going to have a lot to discuss in the coming two years. It's going to be a lot of action. A lot of proposals, a lot of bills, a lot of stuff going on. And then, like, the 2028 Democratic primary fight is going to start, like, in five minutes. I dread that. I know that's not in your scope of work, so maybe you can try to ignore it, but it's going to be miserable. I mean, unfortunately, because so many governors are going to run, like, what is the best set of state policies that they pass? Yeah. The 2028 that they run on. Unfortunately, I have to think about that more than I ever wanted to. I don't want to think about that. I know, but this is a huge dynamic, is given all these governors are going to run. I know. They're going to want to run on something. So they're all going to be very eager to do something. Yes. That's visible and that they think sets them up for a national run. So it'll be interesting to hear, like, what their consultants are telling them would look good for a presidential run. Things we have to think about. All right. Any final thoughts? Generational shift and change Tuesday night. This gives us an opportunity to right the ship on U.S. climate and clean energy policy that has felt adrift in a bad way over the last two years. We have the opportunity to build a lot of things and put a lot of steel in the ground. You know, that's what an election does. It kicks open a window of possibility. Now that window is there, but that window doesn't pass policy on its own. So, you know, everybody listening, if you have ideas on how any of these lawmakers can build clean, cut costs for people at the same time, now is the time to get in contact with your local state lawmaker, governor, et cetera. Yes, they're listening right now. They're listening to this. Well, and Dave, if you could keep having winning public service commission candidates, I think that would be really helpful going forward. I know. I know. This is the key to PSC elections is the votes appearance. I think we need to spread that conventional wisdom. Do you care? Do you care that no one talked much about climate in this particular wave election year? Do you care whether they talk much about climate in 2028? I'll just say, if they pass good energy policy, if they get clean energy going, if they get clean transportation going, if they get good housing going, I don't give a shit what words they say. But lots of people seem extremely exercised about this question of whether they use the word or not. I know. Do you care? I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. And I think a lot of people in DC care and not a lot of people outside of it. Honest take on this conversation. The candidates who do well are the candidates who talk to their voters and voters told them, I care about cost and I want cost to go down. I don't like this war. Very clear message from voters. So that's what we're here to do. All right. Well, thank you as always for coming on. Jeez, what a rollercoaster it's been just over the three times we've done this. It's been a wild rollercoaster. Who knows? What will happen when we're talking in November 2028? God only knows. All right. But thank you for all your work. Congratulations on your huge slate of victories and good luck in coming years. Thank you. You too. Thanks for having me on. Thanks, everybody. You've been listening to Volts, founded and hosted by me, David Roberts, produced by Nate Peavy, and supported entirely through the generosity of listeners like you. If you value conversation, you can find us on Twitter at DavidRoberts.com. 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