On October 20, the two candidates running to represent Michigan in the U.S. Senate, Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers, took questions for an hour at the Detroit Economic Club. El-Sayed, the Democrat who had previously run for governor, made a name for himself years ago by connecting public health to the climate crisis. He published a fierce defense of the Green New Deal at the time, touting its economic, health, and planetary benefits. But last month at the Detroit Economic Club, El-Sayed didn’t mention the Green New Deal at all.
Instead, the only mentions of such a plan came from his opponent, who used it as an attack on El-Sayed and the Democratic party as a whole. “We need to make sure we don’t have the largest tax increase in the history of the country,” Rogers said, “which is, that’s what the other team is talking about doing.”
A vote for El-Sayed would ring in an era of “big government, government control, more rules, more regulation, another Green New Deal,” Rogers continued. It’s become a common refrain since President Donald Trump’s effort to rebrand the climate movement’s push for widescale public investment in renewable energy as a “Green New Scam.”
Two weeks later, El-Sayed handily won the race.
Even though many of the newly elected Democrats did not talk about the Green New Deal by name, the think tank Climate and Community Institute describes El-Sayed as belonging to a new class of green economic populists who are running for public office (and winning) by connecting the need for climate action to soaring utility bills and the hoarding of wealth by a handful of individuals and companies.
El-Sayed “clearly gets it,” said Patrick Bigger, research director at Climate and Community Institute, or CCI. The senator-elect’s platform, which proposes stricter regulations on data centers and energy companies, is “really exciting,” he said. These are promising climate agenda items — even if Democrats don’t explicitly call them that. For example, voters may oppose data centers in their backyard for any number of reasons, but some number of them are required for our digitalized reality and progressives now have an opportunity to take the companies behind them to task and get them to commit to reducing their strain on the local environment. Likewise, where voters came out in support of lowering utility bills, electeds now can talk further about investing in cheaper renewable energy systems like solar and wind power.
Bigger led a recent analysis that scored candidates in this year’s primary and midterm elections based on three questions: Is the candidate pushing for renewable energy or other climate actions? Do they name the rising cost of living as a voter issue, and have a plan to lower those costs? Do they articulate a populist vision by blaming wealthy corporations and powerful individuals for both the climate and affordability crises? CCI argues that candidates like El-Sayed who check all three boxes are the climate champions of the moment.
Other progressives named in the report include Will Lawrence, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, the climate group that first sounded the alarm for a Green New Deal in 2018. Lawrence, who will represent Michigan’s 7th District in the next Congress, points to his history of climate organizing on his website: “I will be among the most knowledgeable and dedicated members of Congress on water, climate and energy policy,” he writes. “I will fight for investment to secure the climate we depend on, adapt to the changes we can’t prevent, and finally drive our electric bills down.”
These “new folks headed to the House and the Senate who are really on board with a robust transformative approach to climate,” said Bigger, represent “a major shift.”
But not all climate progressives heading to Washington next year are so allergic to calling it the Green New Deal: Representatives-elect Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York City name it specifically on their campaign websites and in the press. Still, this new wave of climate leaders may feel it’s time for the decarbonization agenda to get a refresh; Valdez and Avila Chevalier’s websites also include mentions of “a livable planet for all” and “a livable world for everyone,” respectively. In part, this diversity of messaging tactics reflects the fractured nature of the climate movement since Trump retook office with a checklist of Biden-era environmental regulations to roll back.
If progressive Democrats’ messaging on climate has shifted, said Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, it’s because the terrain they’re fighting in has changed, too. “I think, as the climate crisis gets worse and worse, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the strategy, policy-wise, needs to be incorporating climate change into every single aspect of what we’re doing,” she said. In other words, climate policy should not be framed as a separate issue from the economy, infrastructure improvements, or foreign policy. “It should be the defining framework within which we have to think about how we run our society,” said Shiney-Ajay.
In 2018, the Sunrise Movement burst onto the national stage by protesting outside House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s office — with the Green New Deal as their top priority. Just seven years later, members of the Sunrise Movement voted to reorganize around the priority of fighting authoritarianism and, in particular, the second Trump administration. Shiney-Ajay acknowledged that the climate movement has suffered in recent years.
But that doesn’t mean that the public has become disengaged from the climate crisis. In fact, voters across the political spectrum are more attuned to it than ever. “People are actually really hungry for something to do about climate change,” said Shiney-Ajay. “I think we will actually see a lot of momentum around stopping the climate crisis. And I certainly hope to build a movement that makes that possible.”
Wherever climate progressives or so-called “green economic populists,” are in office, the CCI report says, now is the time to govern. (It’s worth noting that a petition launched this week asking Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who famously joined Sunrise members in the protest outside of Pelosi’s office, to run in the 2028 presidential race.) It will, of course, take more than the next two years, or the next presidential term, to solve the climate crisis.