By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
By the time you read this, polls will have already opened on the East Coast. It’s your opportunity to shape the country in which you live, so get out today and vote like your life depends on it.
In several states – Arizona and Nevada leap immediately to mind – clean energy is on the ballot. In both states, constitutional amendments are on the ballot that would raise the renewable portfolio standards (RPS) to 50% by 2030. Both amendments have been hard fought contests, with progressive billionaire Tom Steyer fighting hard against entrenched utility interests (especially in Arizona) to put the issue before the voters.
And one day before the vote, the Solar Energy Industries Association and Vote Solar (in the personages of Abigail Ross Hopper and Adam Browning) penned an op-ed urging Nevada voters to support Question 6, which is how the amendment appears on the ballot.
The op-ed starts out with a strong clarion call, appealing to voters on both sides of the aisle:
Nevada families will head to the polls tomorrow and cast their ballots in a host of hotly contested races. But whether you’re a Republican, Democrat or Independent, there are two things all voters agree on: They want clean air and they want prosperity.
Clean air and prosperity. That’s a winning combination of issues. Instead of framing it as strictly a solar issue – on which there is still a divide between those who understand solar and those who have yet to learn about it – SEIA and Vote Solar decided instead to frame the issue as being a pocketbook and overall health issue. And that messaging, I must say, is brilliant.
I’ve been critical in the past of SEIA for what I saw as its difficulty in finding its political voice, particularly at the state level. But the more I see of the new, aggressive tone of the asssociation – and its increased willingness to fight for issues at the state level – the more impressed I’ve become.
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