Gerry Clauss is a former electrician. But he had never worried so much about paying for electricity until the power bill on his single-family home hit $422 a month.
That was over the summer, so he turned off the air conditioner, began freeze-drying bulk food purchases rather than storing them in his electric freezer, and started shutting off his lights more often.
“It’s got to the point where people will do what they gotta do to survive,” the 65-year-old from Hainesport, N.J., said.
He said he plans to vote Tuesday for Republican Jack Ciattarelli in Tuesday’s election for governor, motivated in part by soaring energy costs in an open race where they have become a hot topic. Clauss agrees with Ciattarelli’s goal to quit a regional carbon-reduction program, which the former state assemblyman has pitched as a way to lower power bills—though Clauss supports clean energy.
Big power bills are overlapping with rising food prices and inflation that remains persistently above the Federal Reserve’s target, frustrating Americans. Fall weather lightens electric bills as people stop using air conditioning, but a cold winter could hike bills again for those who rely on electric heat systems.