by Mary Landers, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]

February 17, 2026

At a luncheon talk to the Golden Isles Republican Women’s group on Thursday, Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore cheered on the Trump administration’s deregulation efforts and discussed what she sees as young women’s unnecessary anxiety about climate change.

But she didn’t mention the 2026 PSC race. There’s a good reason why. On Tuesday she announced she’s not running in it.

“After thoughtful conversations with my family, colleagues, and trusted advisors, I have decided not to seek re-election to the Georgia Public Service Commission in 2026,” she wrote in a press release Tuesday.

Pridemore was appointed to the five-member commission in 2018 by Gov. Nathan Deal, whose two inaugurals she co-chaired. She had no previous energy or regulatory experience, but ran for her seat that November with the power of incumbency and won with 50.3% of the statewide vote. She hasn’t had to face voters again because the scheduled 2024 PSC elections were postponed until this year.

In November, two of her colleagues on the previously all-Republican PSC were defeated in their attempts to retain their seats. The victories for Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson marked the first time their party won a statewide constitutional office in Georgia since 2006, and set the stage for the 2026 midterm elections.

Pridemore was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Georgia’s 11th Congressional District in 2014 but came third in the Republican primary that made Barry Loudermilk the party’s candidate. Loudermilk won his reliably red district repeatedly, but is now retiring. Pridemore is considering a run for that seat, she noted in her press release.

“In recent weeks, many Georgians have encouraged me to consider running for Congress in Georgia’s 11th District. While I have made no final decision, I deeply appreciate the support and will take the time to listen, pray, and carefully consider this.”

She has until March 6 to qualify as a candidate. Her term on the PSC ends on Dec. 31, 2026.

“In the time ahead, I remain committed to my duties on the Public Service Commission and to delivering the results Georgians expect and deserve,” she wrote in the press release.

What ‘breaks her heart’

Pridemore was eager to tell the Republican women the big climate news of Thursday.

“Today, President Trump is reversing the endangerment finding,” she said. She explained, “It was a rule that Obama’s EPA put forward that claimed that carbon dioxide, CO2, was artificially and rapidly warming the planet.”

The endangerment finding “has driven all of our power bills at minimum, 30% higher because of all the federal regulations that have been brought around the endangerment finding,” she said.

Pridemore did not respond to a request to cite a source for that statistic.

But environmentalists and climate scientists have denounced the EPA’s retraction of these regulations as ultimately costly for Americans, especially in terms of health. “(T)he EPA is choosing a path that would create as much as 18 billion tons of additional climate pollution by 2055, equivalent to about 3 years of total US emissions,” former EPA Director of the Office of Transportation and Air Quality Margo T. Oge wrote in Forbes. “And, that means 58,000 additional premature deaths and 37 million more asthma attacks for the US population, where nearly half already live in areas with failing air quality.”

Pridemore told the Republican women that most people who give public comment at the PSC do so about environmental issues.

“I feel for them, because so much of it is emotional to them,” she said. “It’s a personal, deeply held belief that they have that’s emotionally based.”

What “breaks her heart” she said, is the young women who tell the PSC that because of global warming, they’re not planning to have children. She blames Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” for clouding youths’ minds.

“They should be going out, enjoying their time in higher education, meeting people, making friends,” she said. “Meet a boy, and then have a baby, all the exciting, good things that we think about as Americans.”

The crowd of about 35 people at Bennie’s Red Barn applauded.

But Pridemore’s analysis didn’t ring true to Olivia Asher, one of dozens of young women who have given comment to the PSC over the last several years. The Current GA contacted her and shared Pridemore’s quotes.

“I’ve never heard of this film in my life, so I don’t really think that a lot of the young women are watching this film,” Asher told The Current. “In my opinion, it is quite old.”

Asher, a computational scientist pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Georgia, gave comment to the PSC in December.

“I was not focusing on emotional concerns about climate change,” she said. “I’m mainly focused on scientific and economic concerns around the natural gas expansion proposed by Georgia Power and approved by the Public Service Commission.”

Asher said she doesn’t see her peers linking environmental issues with concerns about having children.

“I see more concerns of having children due to economic issues,” she said. “So people being concerned that they’re not going to be able to afford to have children, and that, again, if your electricity bill is reaching into the 1000s a month, that’s a big reason why you would not want to have children if you can’t afford to provide them power.”

This article first appeared on The Current and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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