In May's Alabama primary elections, voters sent a clear message to the utility regulators who govern their power bills: change course or step aside. Jeremy Oden, a Republican who had served on the Public Service Commission since 2012, lost his re-election bid decisively to Matt Gentry, the sheriff of Cullman County, with Gentry capturing 75 percent of the vote to Oden's 25 percent. Across the state, the shift reflects a groundswell of frustration that has reached a breaking point—one rooted in economics that touch every household.
Eight out of ten Alabamians now cite economic concerns as the top issue state leaders should address, according to polling released earlier this year. At the heart of that anxiety sits a painful reality: Alabama Power customers pay the highest average residential utility bills among the 100 largest investor-owned utilities in the United States. That distinction has made electricity prices a rallying point for voters tired of watching their monthly bills climb while regulatory bodies seemed reluctant to hold companies accountable.
The electoral shakeup did not stop with Oden's loss. Chris Beeker, another Republican incumbent on the PSC, also failed to secure the most votes in his primary race. Jim Zeigler, a perennial candidate who served on the commission from 1975 to 1979, earned 45 percent of the vote compared to Beeker's 25 percent. The result sent both men toward a June 16 runoff, signaling that voters in that race too were seeking fresh leadership on utility regulation.
What makes Alabama's political moment particularly significant is the context of electricity prices stretching across the nation. Data center projects—massive facilities that consume enormous amounts of power to fuel artificial intelligence infrastructure—have begun sprouting across Alabama, further straining the state's power grid. In neighboring Georgia, similar utility cost increases tied to data center expansion became the dominant issue in Public Service Commission elections, leading to headline-grabbing flips from Republican to Democrat control. Fear of a comparable outcome in deep red Alabama has left politicians genuinely nervous about the direction of the state's politics.
Those fears proved so potent that lawmakers were forced to pull a bill during this year's legislative session that would have ended Public Service Commission elections altogether, after significant public outcry. Instead, the GOP-controlled legislature passed a major restructuring that expands the PSC from three to seven members and creates a new secretary of energy position appointed by the governor. The new law also makes it significantly more difficult to initiate formal rate cases—effectively barring public hearings on Alabama Power's rates before 2029, and subsequently requiring either the secretary of energy or five of seven commission members to approve such hearings.
Yet the candidates stepping forward to replace incumbents are not backing away from reform. Matt Gentry has pledged to call for the first formal public rate hearing overseeing Alabama Power's electricity price increases since 1982—a gap of more than four decades. His Democratic opponent, James O. Gordon, has pushed even further, calling for regular rate hearings, an immediate 25 percent reduction in bills, and consideration of a profit cap on the utility company. Jim Zeigler, meanwhile, has focused his campaign on opposing both large data center projects and solar farms, warning that such developments "can ruin your community, consume water and drive your electric bills up."
The message from Alabama voters is unmistakable: the old way of regulating utilities in silence is no longer acceptable.