The fight over data centers is suddenly at the epicenter of the midterm elections.
One new ad in Texas begins with someone typing into a chatbot, “Why is my electric bill going up?” Another in Ohio blames one of the state’s Republican senators for a proliferation of data centers, calling them “a total scam.” And in top House battlegrounds in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Democratic challengers are all running ads against the server warehouses powering the artificial intelligence boom.
Data centers have become unlikely fault-lines in the broader fight over an A.I. revolution that is remaking the global economy and threatening to disrupt the job market. Now politicians are racing to tap into the backlash — or inoculate themselves — as political strategists in both parties described the issue as an unusually fast-moving force that is already reshaping races for the House, the Senate and governor’s mansions.
“It’s very much a bottom up, organic movement,” said Anna Greenberg, a veteran Democratic pollster, who said that while people’s views on data centers were largely tied to how close they live to them, the facilities were also becoming symbols of the excesses of Silicon Valley.
“Data centers are a physical manifestation,” she said. “Billionaires are building them, and it feeds into all of the big tech skepticism that is there. It’s very symbolic of everybody’s issues with A.I.”
There are signs that the emerging data center debate is scrambling the usual partisan divisions.
So far, Democrats have chiefly been the ones racing to harness voter anger about data centers over rising electricity prices, water use and mistrust of the tech sector. They aim to punish Republicans for cozying up to industry by approving many of these projects.
But in recent weeks, a growing number of Republican candidates have scrambled to shield themselves from any fallout. They have voiced skepticism about data centers, despite President Trump’s full-throated cheerleading for the A.I. industry and fears among party leaders in Washington that blocking construction of the centers could slow the economy and make the United States less competitive against China.
Some Republicans are now using “data center” as an epithet, and casting themselves as the real opponents of corporate tax breaks and unfettered construction. Last week, Mike Rogers, the Republican running for Senate in the key swing state of Michigan, said that he supports a one-year moratorium on data center construction.
Polls show a revolt brewing against data centers. A Gallup poll conducted in March showed 71 percent opposed local construction of the centers, and a summer survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania showed that the number of people opposing new data centers in their areas had risen by 12 percentage points since February and March.
The fallout has been so swift that in some races, including the governor’s contests in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida, both Democrats and Republicans are airing television ads about data centers.
On Wednesday, a remarkable memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned that data center politics was endangering Senator Jon Husted of Ohio, a Republican. His challenger, Sherrod Brown, the state’s former Democratic senator, has aired millions of dollars of ads, calling Mr. Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio.”
“More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” the memo said.
The one-page document, which was earlier reported by Axios, amounted to a desperate plea for the well-heeled industry to finance an advertising campaign — lest a Husted loss serve as “a cautionary lesson” for politicians elsewhere.
Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster, said that opposing data centers offered Democrats a rare chance to make inroads in rural areas and small towns that are resisting the developments.
“It absolutely shakes up the snow globe on the partisan coalitions in a part of the world where Republicans have been dominant,” he said. “It’s one of the few issues today that does not immediately code as red or blue, left or right.”
In Florida, Representative Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, spent more than $2 million on one ad in his primary, vowing to “protect” the state from data centers that “jack up utility rates.” In the ad, he tried to cast that position as standing with Mr. Trump, whose administration sought to blunt some of the opposition earlier this year by proposing a “ratepayer protection pledge,” in which data centers promise not to drive up electricity costs.
His Democratic opponent in the fall, David Jolly, said that “we don’t want crime or data centers in our neighborhoods” in one of his first ads of the general election.
In a sign of how top-of-mind data centers have become, Mr. Donalds brought up the topic unprompted at an event last week in Naples, Fla. “Listen, I know people have concerns,” he said. “I’ve seen the polling. But leadership isn’t just looking at polling.”
He then tried to thread the needle between selling the importance of artificial intelligence for the United States’ competitive future and addressing boiling anger at local data centers. “I don’t want it near your home, just like I don’t want it near my home,” Mr. Donalds said.
Mr. Jolly’s position is less complicated. In an interview on Thursday, he said Florida should impose a moratorium on data center construction until the full impacts could be studied.
The fierceness of the mounting opposition has startled some in the tech sector.
“This is a powder keg,” warned Chamath Palihapitiya, a public-facing venture capital investor, in a post on X this week, responding to the dire warning in the N.R.S.C. memo. He wrote that the A.I. industry had “failed miserably in doing the basics” of selling itself.
Political strategists and pollsters in both parties said that voters have linked the facilities to concerns over higher electricity prices, water use, the fate of farmlands and general fears about the advent of artificial intelligence and big tech.
“They didn’t do a good enough job explaining anything,” Ryan James Girdusky, a Republican political strategist and podcaster, said of the industry.
In Texas, the Democratic candidate for Senate, James Talarico, and for governor, Gina Hinojosa, have held recent events about data centers, accusing their Republican rivals of pocketing data center donations while backing expansions.
“Texans are mad,” Ms. Hinojosa said in an interview. “It is hard to convey what feels like an invasion by data centers with no rules, no laws to protect Texas. They’re popping up everywhere.”
It was her advertisement that featured a chatbot being asked about the cause of rising electricity prices. The answer it provides? Blaming Gov. Greg Abbott and data centers.
Even before that ad, Mr. Abbott, a Republican, had been shifting his stance on data centers. Less than a year ago, Mr. Abbott bragged that Google’s $40 billion investment made Texas “the epicenter of A.I. development,” bringing both construction jobs and tax revenues.
But this summer he announced new standards for data centers on water use and electricity and called to end some tax incentives. Earlier this month he directed the state’s utility commission to audit all data centers seeking permits before they could move forward.
“Data center growth cannot come at the expense of Texans’ livelihoods,” said Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Mr. Abbott.
Mr. Abbott is hardly the only politician pivoting.
Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a potential Democratic candidate for president in 2028, had been a booster of A.I. investments. In June 2025, Mr. Shapiro said he was “proud” of Amazon’s $20 billion data center investment, bragging it would be the largest private sector investment in the state’s history.
On Tuesday, Mr. Shapiro signed an executive order imposing what he called the “strictest guardrails in the nation” to stop “predatory developers.”
“I’ve heard loud and clear from the people of Pennsylvania,” said Mr. Shapiro, who is up for re-election this year.
Now Mr. Shapiro has started airing a television ad attacking his Republican challenger, Stacy Garrity, as the “number one fan of data centers.” Ms. Garrity has her own ad hitting Mr. Shapiro for “data centers in our backyards,” but her campaign can afford only a small fraction of the airtime.
Another Republican candidate for governor running on data center politics is Representative Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin, who has attacked his Democratic rival as “Data Center David Crowley.” Mr. Crowley narrowly won the nomination over a democratic socialist, Francesca Hong, who had demanded a data center moratorium.
Neither Mr. Crowley nor Mr. Tiffany has called for a moratorium.
Mr. Crowley has preferred to let local communities decide, with a number of guardrails and restrictions. Mr. Tiffany, who called data centers “exciting new technology” just a few months ago, is now calling for a repeal of tax incentives.
In Michigan, William Lawrence, a progressive activist, rode an anti-data center message to win the Democratic nomination in a key Michigan House seat this month and then immediately made a general election ad targeting Representative Tom Barrett, the Republican incumbent, on the issue.
Mr. Barrett campaigned on Tuesday with Speaker Mike Johnson in Michigan, who warned that, while “community concerns” needed to be accounted for, “a broad moratorium against data centers is kind of a dangerous prospect right now.”
The next day Mr. Barrett began airing a new data center ad of his own, in which he claimed that “I stood up to my own party and voted against giving your tax dollars to data centers.”
In an interview, Mr. Lawrence, who supports a moratorium, called the ad “outrageous” and said voters would not be satisfied with half measures. Data center opposition, he said, was “number one in terms of intensity” in the district.
“It’s bringing together three-time Trump voters, anti-vaxxers, environmentalists, independents, nonvoters, people who are in our cities, people who are in the rural areas,” Mr. Lawrence said. “And it’s bringing together all these people because none of us trust big tech to do right by our communities.”
Patricia Mazzei and Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.
