This week’s burst of state speeches has turned “affordability” into a common theme for governors trying to address what voters say they feel in daily life, from the price of groceries to the cost of keeping the lights on. The issue has also pushed governors to connect policy choices—such as housing expansion, utility regulation and tax relief—to the broader political argument about who is helping households and who is driving prices higher.
While the term covers many different costs, polls cited by The Associated Press show that large shares of Americans report stress tied to food and housing. In an AP-NORC poll from October, about 54% of U.S. adults said the cost of groceries was a “major source” of stress, and at least 4 in 10 said the cost of housing, savings, pay and health care were “major” stressors. The report also cites AP-NORC polling from December that found about 9 in 10 U.S. adults said they had experienced higher prices than usual for groceries in recent months, and about 7 in 10 said the same about electricity.
Some governors described affordability in terms of broad inflation patterns, while others framed it as a practical household problem. The AP report says the government’s main inflation measure shows average annual prices rose by less than 3% from 2012 until 2021, with larger jumps beginning later; since the middle of 2023, annual increases have hovered around 3%, even as some categories—including electricity and housing—have risen faster than the average. Within that mix, many governors have focused on policies that can deliver relief more quickly than long-term changes to wages alone.
Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, for example, is using direct payments in her message, seeking to send $300 relief checks to 725,000 residents. Other governors have offered policy targets designed to reduce the rise of particular bills, including efforts to cap or freeze utility costs and to shape what it takes to build more housing.
The speeches also show governors taking aim at how affordability is being discussed nationally, including in the political framing associated with President Donald Trump. Republicans have often emphasized tax cuts as a route to household relief, with state officials including Florida, Georgia and North Dakota aiming to eliminate property taxes for homeowners over time and Kentucky and Mississippi pursuing long-term income tax reductions. Critics warn that those plans could increase states’ reliance on sales taxes, which they say disproportionately affect low-income people. Trump has also returned to the theme of making the country “affordable again,” while the AP report says he has criticized the way Democrats talk about affordability, repeatedly calling it a hoax or scam and blaming Democrats for higher prices.
In her address, Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, delivered a direct counter to that framing without naming Trump. “There are some who have even called affordability a hoax or a con job,” Spanberger said. “And I would invite them to come to Virginia and engage with the families and the business leaders I have met … because the facts tell a different story.”
Housing has emerged as a central element of many Democrats’ affordability strategies. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs have all called for multiprong approaches with an emphasis on housing policy, the AP report says. Healey, in her state of the commonwealth speech last month, called for converting empty office space into apartments and using government-owned property to build housing; Hobbs proposed charging a nightly fee on vacation rentals and using the proceeds to help families with housing and utility costs; and Newsom told lawmakers to pass a law to stop institutional investors from buying homes in bulk.
Francis Torres, director of housing and infrastructure projects at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said that housing changes often take time to show up on the ground. “There’s a difference between legalizing housing on paper and the housing actually being built,” Torres said, adding that officials are also trying to bridge the gap with down-payment support and other help aimed at families in the meantime.
Energy costs and utility bills also featured prominently in state-level affordability debates. The AP report says that in New Jersey, utility rates were a major part of last year’s governor race, and when Democrat Mikie Sherrill was sworn in in January she signed executive orders, including one to freeze utility rates and another aimed at establishing more electricity production, with solar and nuclear power among the targets. Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun supports a measure that would limit investor-owned utilities’ ability to increase profit margins unless they provide customers with affordable energy, and Healey announced in her January speech that electric bills would drop by 25% and gas bills by 10% in February and March, with some of the electric reduction funded through a mechanism tied to a clean energy and efficiency fund.
The affordability messaging has extended beyond housing and utilities into tax policy and direct income support. In Washington state, the AP report says Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson is calling for an income tax on those making more than $1 million a year in a state that does not currently levy an income tax, framing it as a way to expand a tax credit for working families and provide tax breaks for small business owners. Indiana’s Braun said affordability depends on attracting more and higher-wage jobs, pointing to hourly earnings that he said grew faster than the national average last year. In Rhode Island, the AP report says Democratic Gov. Daniel McKee unveiled an “Affordability for All” agenda that includes a refundable child tax credit, lower taxes on gasoline and eliminating them on Social Security.
If you’re building an affordability plan, governors are effectively choosing which part of the household budget they can most directly influence: they can try to lower bills now, reduce taxes, send checks, or expand housing supply—while also arguing that their approach better matches the lived reality of voters.