GOP Bets On Energy Policy To Power November Turnout

By Leonard Robinson, NH Journal

Republicans are betting that policies promoting more energy production and lower energy prices can help turn out their voters in November, even as Democrats blame President Donald Trump’s war with Iran for rising fuel costs.

The debate has particular resonance in New Hampshire, where Republicans argue that expanding natural gas pipeline capacity is essential to lowering the region’s high utility bills.

At Monday’s 2026 New Hampshire Energy Summit, Parker Littlehale, Eversource’s wholesale power supply manager, pointed to New England’s limited pipeline capacity and reliance on more expensive imported liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

“We don’t have enough natural gas pipelines to get enough gas here to heat the homes and businesses and run the power plants,” Littlehale said. “The region relies on global LNG to balance demand and supply and unlike domestic natural gas prices, global LNG prices are much higher.”

While Democrats have opposed expanding fossil-fuel infrastructure, Republicans like NH-01 candidate Anthony DiLorenzo have embraced an “all of the above” energy policy to save residents money and promote economic investment in the state.

“If we want lower energy costs, we need pipelines,” DiLorenzo said.

The same message dominated energy discussions at the Republican Midterm Convention earlier this month in Dallas, where speakers promoted expanded production and attacked Democrats’ climate policies.

“Our predecessors killed the American Dream with trillions of dollars in waste and green energy scams, the greatest scams in American history, green energy,” Trump told the convention. “With the help of our great energy workers here in Texas, our country is producing more oil and gas today than ever before.”

Democrats counter that energy costs have soared since Trump began the war with Iran in February, with diesel prices above $6 a gallon.

“The cost of diesel just hit a record high, the price of regular gas is up nearly 50 percent since the war began,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. “If Trump continues his current course in Iran, I can promise you this as well: the costs will just keep piling up.”

Republicans argue the war’s effects are temporary, while Democrats’ policies would restrict domestic energy production for years.

The Trump administration recently ended a Biden-era requirement for fossil fuel power plants to curb carbon emissions by 2039 or shut down. The White House says the move will generate $310 billion in energy cost savings across the economy.

“American energy was under attack,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told the convention. But now, “we’ve unleashed American energy.”

Industry advocates urged Republicans to make that contrast central to their campaigns.

“Republicans have an opportunity this November to make the contrast clear: unleash American energy, cut costly regulations, and dismantle the Green New Deal policies that raise the cost of electricity, transportation, food, and nearly everything Americans buy,” said Jason Isaac of the American Energy Institute.

Republicans also see an opening in state races. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who chairs the Republican Attorneys General Association, highlighted a court ruling blocking New York’s Climate Superfund Act, which would require fossil fuel companies to help pay for climate adaptation projects.

“Today, your Republican attorneys general are making sure that California and New York don’t get to set policy for the rest of the country,” Knudsen said.

But some activists at the convention told InsideSources that Republicans have not effectively communicated their efforts to lower costs.

Stephanie Olson, a GOP activist from Bristol, said Trump’s economic record should appeal to voters, but “there are still questions that remain in people’s heads when they go buy daily life expenses.”

Jennifer LePlay of Sandwich urged Republicans to emphasize their work in GOP-controlled legislatures, including New Hampshire’s.

“The federal government is too big, and a lot of those policies don’t necessarily interject in our daily life as much as the state level policies,” LePlay told NHJournal.

New Hampshire GOP activist Al Letizio Jr. said Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Sununu and DiLorenzo have got the energy issue right.

“I’ve heard John Sununu and Anthony DiLorenzo talk about bringing down energy costs,” Letizio said. “There’s a concern about supply and demand, and when you start bringing in pipelines, natural gas, or electricity, you’ll get some groups opposing that and, as a result, a lower supply.”

Democrats, on the other hand, “want to lower energy prices but don’t want pipelines or power lines.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.