- President Donald Trump’s bid to kill wind power is straining the clean energy industry — and imperiling GOP lawmakers whose communities have seen wind as an economic boon.
- Few of those lawmakers are more endangered than Iowa’s Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
- Hailing from a state that gets nearly two-thirds of its electricity from wind turbines while paying some of the lowest power bills in the nation, Miller-Meeks… cast a crucial vote for Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which wiped out billions of dollars in wind’s economic incentives — throwing Iowa’s 50-plus wind-related companies into uncertainty.
- That vote is giving Democrats new hope of capturing Miller-Meek’s district in Iowa’s southeast corner, where she won reelection last year by only 798 votes.
- Republicans are scrambling to preserve their narrow House majority in next year’s midterms, with national polls showing most voters unhappy with the GOP’s sweeping budget bill.
- But the following morning, [Miller-Meeks] stood side by side at the Ames National Laboratory with Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who used the occasion to argue that heavy federal government spending on renewable energy is “nonsensical.”
- The contradiction won’t fly with Iowa voters, said Matt Mohrfeld, the Democratic mayor of Fort Madison, which is home to a Siemens Gamesa wind turbine plant that employs about 300 people.
- “It does break my heart to speak out against Marianne Miller-Meeks because she’s a friend, but on this one she was wrong and it’s going to be a crucial mistake,” Mohrfeld said. “I don’t know how anybody in good faith could vote against alternative energy if they’re elected by the people in Iowa. She will not be reelected.”
- Few states have embraced wind power the way Iowa has.
- The Republican stronghold gets more of its electricity from wind than any other state. More than 50 companies are part of its wind industry, which has drawn $22 billion in total investments in the past three decades. Despite Trump’s and Wright’s claims that wind power makes electricity more expensive and unreliable, Iowa’s power costs are among the lowest in the nation and its grid is among the most stable.
- Democrats say Trump’s policies are stoking inflation and will worsen already-rising power prices by stifling development of inexpensive and easy-to-deploy solar and wind, the country’s fastest-growing sources of electricity.
- In Miller-Meeks’ district alone, three large manufacturing plants — including Siemens Gamesa — produce blades for wind turbines.
- The federal cutbacks and potential job losses are coming as spiking power prices around the country offer an opening for Democrats to make an economy-focused pitch for taking back the House.
- Wright conceded in the interview with POLITICO that rising electricity rates are a political problem that Republicans are “going to get blamed” for…
- Still, Richie Schmidt, president of Laborers Local 177 in Des Moines, said he expects a slowdown in energy-related construction work among his 5,000 union members in Iowa.
- “When we’re forecasting manpower, we see a big push right now to whatever wind projects and solar projects were on the books, to get those things under construction,” Schmidt said. “But unfortunately, when this rush is done, we have a feeling it’s going to be really over.”
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