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Dear Friend
The election results this past week provided another clear sign that economic populism is on the rise.
At the American Economic Liberties Project, we’ve long believed that state and local governments can be engines for bold, transformative change. That’s why, since the very start of our organization, we’ve invested so much in building a robust state and local antimonopoly movement . And we have some big wins to show for it, with landmark laws passed to ban algorithmic price fixing in California [[link removed]] , end rental price collusion in New York [[link removed]] , spur major corporate practice-of-medicine reforms in Oregon [[link removed]] , and more.
In The Economic Populist this week, Pat Garofalo, our Director of State and Local Policy, breaks down last week's big wins in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York, what it means for this work, and how to keep the momentum going. Read it below.
Read The Economic Populist [[link removed]]
We are also excited to announce two important additions to the Economic Liberties team.
Marissa Gillett , former Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority Chairwoman, is joining us as a Senior Fellow. Marissa has spent her career fighting for fair utility rates and transparent regulation — critical issues as electricity prices continue to dominate the cost-of-living conversation.
Doug Farrar is joining us as Senior Advisor. As the former Director of the Office of Public Affairs for FTC Chair Lina Khan, we’re excited to leverage his deep experience to grow our political communications capacity and strategy.
Speaking of former Chair Khan, you might have seen that she’s continuing to shape the next generation of leadership and governance. She’s co-chairing the transition team of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and judging from the recent slew of viral videos [[link removed]] , it’s clear we’re not the only ones excited about the move!
Looking ahead to 2026, we’re energized by the growing demand for an economic populist set of politics built to improve the lives of small business owners, workers, and consumers. We are excited to be in partnership with many of you and we encourage you to reach out if you want to collaborate with us on any of our federal or state work.
Warmly,
Nidhi Hegde
Executive Director
Democrats Just Won Big On Affordability. Here’s How to Govern on It.
Some immediate, noticeable solutions to cost-of-living problems.
By Pat Garofalo, Director of State and Local Policy
Democrats triumphed across the country in Tuesday night’s elections. The headline victories, of course, are Zohran Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race, alongside Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger winning her state’s gubernatorial race, and New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill doing the same.
But the electoral sweep goes much deeper. Democrats flipped two Republican seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the state’s utilities regulator. They expanded their majorities in both the Virginia and New Jersey state legislatures. Jay Jones shrugged off a scandal to handily defeat Virginia’s incumbent attorney general. New York State Senator Sean Ryan, a labor champion, won the Buffalo mayoral race. Democrats held three seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. And they regained their majority in the Minnesota State Senate via a special election win.
Many of these races were unexpected blowouts, with Democrats outrunning their polling numbers, a contrast with years in which President Donald Trump is on the ballot.
A lot of text will be spilled this week as we attempt to extrapolate what these victories mean for the 2026 midterms and even the 2028 presidential election. Much of what’s said will be wrong, because off-year elections in places that are various shades of blue to purple have limited predictive value. No one today knows the economic or world events that could dramatically alter future elections.
But what’s undeniable is that the Democrats who won have a massive opportunity to implement the economic ideas they promoted during the campaigns. All of them, much like Trump before them, explicitly campaigned on lowering costs, pursuing what’s come to be called an “affordability” agenda. Many of them called out specific expenses – rent, utilities, health care – that they intend to lower. And they named the names of the corporations or power centers keeping those costs high, whether they are monopoly utilities, corporate landlords using rent-fixing software like RealPage, or health care industry middlemen.
For example, Sherrill has pledged [[link removed]] to declare a state of emergency, freeze utility rates, and take on landlords who collude on rent prices. Spanberger proposed reining in pharmacy benefit managers and making data center operators “ pay [[link removed]] their own way [[link removed]] ” for their power needs. Mamdani relentlessly focused on costs, in everything from groceries to rent to street food. Jones’ campaign platform [[link removed]] includes promises to crack down on monopoly utilities, deceptive junk fees, and price gouging, and to rein in consolidation in the health care industry. And obviously, Georgia’s PSC candidates were focused on the costs the state’s monopoly utilities are foisting onto Georgia families.
In fact, utility prices were the star of the night, policy-wise. And that makes sense. This year alone, natural gas and electricity bills have risen by 13.8 and 6.2 percent [[link removed]] , respectively, and monopoly utilities have requested a record-setting $29 billion in rate hikes [[link removed]] . The nation’s average electricity rate today is 40 percent higher [[link removed]] than it was in 2019, as regulators have consistently blessed [[link removed]] outsized utility profits. Voters in Gainesville, Florida, even voted to strip [[link removed]] a state board of power over their local utilities, granting it to the city commission instead.
In addition, the rapidly expanding sea of data centers – often approved under non-disclosure agreements [[link removed]] that limit public knowledge [[link removed]] or participation – is meeting increasing local opposition, often on the grounds that they will drive up electricity costs. In Virginia, for example, a recent legislative audit found that data center expansion there will cost residents up to $400 annually [[link removed]] in increased electricity costs. Spanberger made this a facet of her campaign, as did Democrats down-ballot [[link removed]] .
Trump has spectacularly failed to deliver [[link removed]] on his promises when it comes to affordability, instead engaging in a bait-and-switch. He’s turned the government over to oligarchs and is gutting the agencies charged with reining in corporate excess and protecting consumers, such as the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Democrats can and must do better if they want to prove that voters’ trust wasn’t misplaced.
The question now is: Will these candidates, once they take office, be able to move rapidly enough and noticeably enough to harness the potent political power of their affordability platforms? Both the Biden and Trump administrations learned the hard way – as Economic Liberties managing editor Helaine Olen recently pointed out [[link removed]] – that simply telling voters that your fixes are delivering relief when they don’t feel it is not a formula for success. No one believes you. It looks like the successful Democratic pols on Tuesday learned this lesson. As Bharat Ramamurti wrote, the explicit embrace of price controls [[link removed]] is indicative that these candidates understood the need for short-term and very noticeable solutions to cost problems, rather than relying on supply-side fixes or other ideas that could take years to show results, like some of the cost policies embraced by the Biden Administration that voters never felt until it was too late.
As someone who has worked to enact economically populist policies at the state level, the test for these leaders is clear: They now need to not only implement those ideas – which were very high-profile promises – but pair them with longer-term, more fundamental changes in the ways in which their states and cities interact with corporate power to bring down prices not just temporarily, but permanently, and return a sense of stability and predictability to costs.
For examples of what to do, they can look to what states have accomplished in just the last few years. Six have banned [[link removed]] deceptive junk fees. New York [[link removed]] adopted a law preventing algorithmic landlord collusion, and California [[link removed]] went further, cracking down on algorithmic price-fixing across its economy. Oregon [[link removed]] and Massachusetts [[link removed]] embraced new limits on private equity firms acquiring health care facilities, while Minnesota placed new requirements [[link removed]] on hospital mergers. And states such as Ohio [[link removed]] and Kentucky [[link removed].] have cut PBMs out of state programs, while Arkansas adopted a law banning them [[link removed]] from owning pharmacies.
These policies aren’t a one-size-fits-all agenda that can be slapped onto a particular state without forethought; they need specific state-based organizing and support of the sort Economic Liberties and its allies have provided in the past and stand ready to provide again. They address the affordability crisis the voters see so clearly, the one the Democrats who won on Tuesday said they’d fix. If they break their word, or are not successful at assuaging voter fears about the high cost of living, they will likely find themselves where Trump and the GOP are today, staring at a slate of broken promises and once-again restive voters ready for yet another change.
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