Wealth & Money Quote by Gray Davis

It’s the rare energy-policy pitch that admits, almost proudly, that the point isn’t just keeping the lights on. Davis is selling electricity as statecraft: build a public power authority, expand capacity, then use surplus supply as bargaining muscle. The rhetoric moves fast from technocratic (“build” or “finance” power) to openly strategic (“leverage”), which tells you the real target isn’t kilowatts, it’s whoever currently holds the upper hand in California’s power market.

The context is the early-2000s electricity crisis, when deregulation, tight supply, and market gaming turned energy into a daily political humiliation. Davis’s line tries to invert that trauma. “More power than our economy provides” isn’t a promise of efficiency; it’s an argument for overbuilding as insurance and as a weapon against price spikes. Surplus becomes a deterrent. If the state can generate or bankroll generation, it can credibly threaten to bypass private suppliers, undercut scarcity pricing, and negotiate from strength.

The subtext is also a quiet rebuke of the market ideology that got California cornered: public authority is framed as pragmatism, not romance, but the emotional charge is about control. “We don’t have today” is doing political work - it implies someone else does. The line channels voter anger into a governance thesis: sovereignty, in a modern economy, can hinge on the grid. Energy independence isn’t patriotism here; it’s leverage in a very specific fight.