Voters Made History. Now it’s Time to Deliver on Affordable Clean Energy, Data Center Guardrails, and Government Accountability
By Abigail Dillen, President of Earthjustice Action
Tuesday night’s election results are not only a repudiation of MAGA, disastrous Trump policies and the relentless attacks on our values and our rule of law. They are also a vindication of the country that Americans are voting for.
This year, we witnessed extraordinary election interference, including a series of decisions by the Supreme Court that jeopardized fair elections and the right to vote. Voters of color in the South were hit the hardest, especially by racial gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court sanctioned. In response, voters turned out in historic numbers with historic results: The nation’s first Black woman governor in Georgia, the first Native American woman governor and public lands champion in New Mexico, Texas’ first Latino governor, and so many seats flipped in states and districts controlled by Republicans for decades. Candidates from Florida to Colorado to North Carolina to Michigan ran on a pro-environment agenda, and they won. It is genuinely amazing to think of all the newly elected candidates who ran and won on the promise that politics can and must be different.
We will be working every day to help deliver on that promise. To be clear, our issues were on the ballot. Most obviously, this election was all about data centers. Data center bans or restrictions passed in at least 38 jurisdictions and counting across the country, and newly elected Democratic governors will determine what happens next in the states where the build-out is happening fastest, including Georgia, Ohio, and Texas.
Relatedly, with rising power demand for data centers and rising energy costs, this election was also about the future of energy. Democrats won control of the Georgia Public Service Commission and appear to have won two seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission, narrowing the Republican majority from 5-0 to 3-2. In Texas, Democrats won a seat on the Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry. With these seats, there is an opportunity to usher in clean energy for people who are struggling with soaring energy costs. These were the opposite of sleepy races: Voters are understanding the connection between data centers, utility rates, and regulatory bodies.
And, in the midst of a rush to drill more oil and gas and entrench our fossil fuel dependence, voters rejected a ballot measure to establish a constitutional “right to gas” in Colorado, a major oil-and-gas-producing state. The oil and gas industry presented voters with a false choice between prosperity and policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Voters know better.
Among the most important debates in the country is how to build the infrastructure we need faster without running over people and the things we can’t wreck. For example, clean water and clean air. This “abundance” debate has its origins in the California housing crisis, and it has come to stand for the proposition that deregulation is the answer to our country’s problems. As data centers show what speed without guardrails looks like, the debate came full circle in California with voters rejecting Prop 45, a sloppy effort to kill environmental review in the permitting process for even the most consequential projects.
This election is a thrilling reminder and a profound challenge: We can move forward together in this country if we are willing to throw in together, believe in our ambition for real change, and act on it. Over the last two years, too many people have underestimated American voters and their ability to care about all the things that matter at once. This election was about the cost of living and an economy that must work infinitely better for everyone. It was also about our health, our health care, and the health of the communities where we live and work. Nowhere was that more powerfully visible than in Iowa, where Rob Sands ran and won a campaign that centered clean water and cancer-causing pollution. This election was also about justice and the rights that Americans are not going to give up, no matter how much money is spent and how much power is abused to create division and drive despair.
People across this country did the real work to organize and vote. A whole bunch of courageous, good people stepped up to lead. The hope that millions of Americans felt on election night is a call to the most ambitious action. Let’s get to work!