Democratic Candidates Highlight Energy Costs in Midterm Campaigns

President Donald Trump’s administration has significantly weakened U.S. climate policy. Despite escalating wildfires, record heat waves, and flooding across the nation, Democratic candidates are refraining from emphasizing climate change in their midterm campaigns.

Instead, candidates are framing climate policy as an affordability concern, highlighting the difficulty Americans face in affording gasoline, groceries, and home insurance against climate‑driven extreme weather.

Consider Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas, who offers the party its strongest opportunity to break a Republican stronghold that has persisted for nearly four decades. While his campaign website includes some references to climate change under an “energy and environment” section, climate is not his primary focus.

His platform emphasizes reducing energy costs, offering emergency assistance for rising utility bills, requiring data centers to fund their own grid upgrades, and expanding jobs in the energy sector.

This stance mirrors analysis by Inside Climate News, which found that Democratic candidates have markedly reduced references to climate change in press releases and campaign messaging.

“We’ve entered an interesting space where climate policy doesn’t need to be called climate policy to be climate policy,” Max Frankel, executive director of the SEEC Institute, a nonprofit that helps guide climate policy in Congress, told DW.

What would a Democratic win mean for climate policy?

Most projections anticipate a Democratic victory in the House and a slim Senate majority in the November 3 election. However, lacking White House control, enacting legislation will be challenging, and any climate policy will likely need bipartisan support, analysts note.

In light of this messaging shift toward affordability rather than climate, few experts expect a full revival of the Inflation Reduction Act. Originally designed to spur clean‑energy investments, the law was substantially weakened by President Trump’s major tax reform.

Nevertheless, Democrats may seek to reinstate certain climate‑friendly provisions of the IRA, especially those that lower household energy costs, such as incentives for energy‑efficiency upgrades and heat‑pump appliances that can replace oil or gas furnaces, analysts said.

Policymakers could also broaden the IRA’s manufacturing tax credit for solar, batteries, and critical minerals—still largely intact—and a bipartisan bill seeks to extend it to cover nuclear‑fusion components.

Deveny noted that the forthcoming measures will be modest in scope—more akin to singles and doubles rather than a home run, but still valuable.

A first bipartisan test over building infrastructure

In a rare bipartisan agreement, several Democrats and Republicans support a reform bill they hope to pass before the new Congress convenes in January.

If passed, the legislation could streamline the development of major infrastructure projects, such as long‑distance transmission lines that move electricity across regions—a process that currently can take years due to intricate permitting requirements.

US turns its back on EVs

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David Spence, a political scientist at the University of Texas, explained that expanded transmission would primarily benefit wind and solar power, since the most cost‑effective sites for these resources are often far from urban centers, making transmission essential for delivering their output to market.

Environmental organizations caution that the bill might also accelerate approvals for fossil‑fuel projects.

Spence added that a strong Democratic showing in the midterms could cause some party members to withdraw support for the bill, believing they could achieve more in the subsequent Congress.

Looking to the 2028 presidential elections

Comprehensive federal climate legislation is unlikely before the 2028 presidential election, and any future action would probably require Democrats to control the White House, the Senate, and the House. As no 2028 platforms have been announced, analysts anticipate several key proposals.

A central focus may be data centers, as mounting public opposition confronts the large‑scale, energy‑intensive infrastructure required for the AI boom. A recent poll indicates that half of Americans oppose locating data centers near their homes, according to Politico.

Deveny said he expects every candidate to include data‑center constraints in their platforms, using them as a vehicle to address affordability—and thereby as an entry point for climate policy.

Democrats may also aim to revive the IRA’s clean‑energy tax incentives. In 2023, over 150 legislators co‑sponsored the Energy Bills Relief Act, which seeks to reinstate IRA tax incentives, streamline transmission permitting, and require data centers to fund their own grid upgrades. Although the bill is unlikely to pass soon, it provides insight into potential Democratic priorities.

Deveny observed that the most widely supported proposal is the restoration of many IRA clean‑energy tax incentives, even though universal backing is lacking; nonetheless, it enjoys strong support among most congressional Democrats.

Other proposals include establishing a federal program to assist insurers in covering climate‑related disasters and lowering premiums, as well as creating climate superfunds that would require fossil‑fuel companies to finance damages and adaptation measures linked to extreme weather.

Vermont and New York enacted similar legislation to establish such funds, though a federal judge halted New York’s initiative.

The 2028 presidential race is slated to commence a few weeks after the midterms, introducing new policy ideas and debates. A new president typically leads the legislative agenda in their first term, especially when their party also controls Congress.

Deveny added that as long as clean energy is recognized as the cheaper, long‑term source of power, numerous solutions can be framed around that premise.

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