What Pennsylvania Teaches Us About Bipartisanship

“My district itself is 40% Democrat, 40% Republican, and 20% independent. So I’m a good kind of little Petri dish case study of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the country at large,” Pennsylvania Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan told me in an exclusive interview on Electric Ladies Podcast. With all walks of life – urban, suburban, rural, Democrats, Republicans, independents, Pennsylvania is the ultimate swing state and could teach us about how to move forward on a bipartisan basis. They voted for Donald Trump in 2016, for Joe Biden in 2020, and then back to Donald Trump by less than 1% in 2024.

Houlahan represents Pennsylvania’s sixth district as a Democrat, bringing her experiences as an Air Force veteran, an educator who worked with Teach for America and taught 11th grade science in Philadelphia, and an entrepreneur. She also comes from an immigrant background, with her grandparents and parents as Holocaust survivors, and from a military family (her father and grandfather served in the Navy). She’s also one of only a couple of dozen Members of Congress with a STEM background – in science, technology, engineering and math – which concerns her since nearly every issue intersects with STEM today. She earned her engineering degree at Stanford (with an ROTC scholarship) and her Master of Science degree in Technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). That’s why she founded and Co-chairs the Women in STEM Caucus too, which she told me is bipartisan.

She’s also Co-Chair of the 60-member Bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus. Pennsylvanians reflect bipartisan support for clean energy and the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Act. The majority supports increasing clean energy in the state, 76% overall, including 84% of independents and 59% of Republicans, according to research by the Global Strategy Group.

“I just believe that we’re fundamentally a very pragmatic people who really think hard, are well educated, in different ways, to understand the complexity of all problems that we have,” including energy, “and we can find solutions that are pragmatic as well,” Houlahan insisted.

“Our planet is under attack and we do have an energy crisis and we do need to move towards renewable and sustainable energies more rapidly than we are. And I think the people of our community, my community, recognize that.”

What strategies build bipartisanship?

Despite the report’s finding that “Overwhelming majorities of voters support significantly increasing the use of clean energy in Pennsylvania,” in 2024, Pennsylvanians voted for Donald Trump and a Republican Senator both of whom are against those programs, while also voting for Houlahan and other Democrats, who do support those programs.

So, how do you reach bipartisanship on climate and clean energy issues?

Here are issues Houlahan said she focuses on to do so:

• Economic growth from these initiatives: “I think the economic argument is one that brings in more people to the tent, you know, brings people further along in the conversation of why should we care about this (climate & clean energy),” Houlahan explained. That might explain why the financial incentives in the IRA were very popular even among Republicans. It’s about the jobs, resources and development these investments bring.

Pennsylvania is slated to receive over $16.7 billion in funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), with the majority earmarked for desperately needed repairs and upgrades to roadways, bridges, water systems, public transit, and airports, according to the US Department of Transportation. It’s all at risk in the GOP-led bill.

• Housing and food are at risk due to climate change: “It’s pretty easy to sort of break down what you need in terms of a safe place to live and a roof over your head and food on the table,” she said. Every district is facing extreme weather events that threaten their homes, businesses and communities. “If your crops aren’t there, you know, you don’t have food on the table, so food security is another really powerful way of talking about this issue.”
• National security: “When you talk about climate issues as an issue of national security, that also pretty much brings people along,” Houlahan added. That includes ensuring that the military bases have reliable electricity and that servicemembers homes are safe from extreme weather. Then there’s the issue of climate migration, of people needing to relocate due to climate events, she said. “So, national security is a really also powerful, bipartisan way of talking about this issue here in, in Congress.”

Sherri Goodman, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security, coining the phrase “threat multiplier,” to describe climate decades ago, because it exacerbates all other security threats. She explained it in her new book, “Threat Multiplier: climate change, military leadership and global security.”