AI’s Power Grab Has to Face Affordability Politics

Even as the labor and housing markets slow, the “three A’s” of the Trump economy have kept things chugging along in 2025: artificial intelligence, asset prices and the affluent. Last week’s elections showed voters have a fourth “A” in mind that threatens the current dynamic: affordability.

In state-wide elections in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia, rising power bills were front and center in messaging from the winning candidates. Mikie Sherrill, who won New Jersey’s gubernatorial election by a larger-than-expected margin, said she planned to freeze utility bills in her first year and declare a state of emergency on utility costs. Virginia’s Governor-elect, Abigail Spanberger, warned that the state with the world’s largest concentration of data centers is heading toward an energy crisis. And in Georgia, two Democrats will take their seats on the body overseeing power costs for the first time in two decades.