Data Center Backlash Is MAGA’s Comeuppance

🚨 27 Days to the Midterms 🚨

Even with all the bad ideas that pop into his head, Donald Trump cannot be persuaded to keep his trap shut. His latest obsession is blabbing about his unyielding faith in unregulated (“self-regulated” is a misnomer) artificial intelligence and unlimited data center construction.

The Associated Press reported that Trump dwelled on data centers in his campaign stop in Ohio over the weekend, where Democrats are leading in polls in the Senate and gubernatorial races. Trump insist the centers “benefit local communities”:

“Look, there’s so much money to be made for Ohio. You can’t just turn them off. They’ll go to China,” Trump said, repeating his defense of data centers that he had made before. The crowd, which had reacted enthusiastically as the president talked about other policies, was far more muted during the data centers remark.

The massive warehouse campuses generating energy for AI projects have become a toxic political issue, drawing bipartisan opposition in races across the country, with voters concerned about their impact on electricity prices, farmland and water supplies. It’s become especially acute in Ohio, where [Republican Sen. Jon] Husted has been repeatedly attacked for his role in attracting data centers to Ohio as lieutenant governor.

Democrats can barely hide their delight. “‘Senator Jon Husted gave billions in tax breaks to Big Tech to make sure they would build their data centers in Ohio,’ [Sherrod] Brown wrote on X on Friday, ahead of Trump’s visit. ‘Now, he’s making Ohioans foot the bill.’”

A data center in Sterling, Virginia. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Trump’s cheerleading came the day after Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network’s Ohio poll showed Brown leading Husted by 3 points and Democrat Amy Acton trouncing Vivek Ramaswamy by 9 points in the race for governor. Included in the results: “Voters overwhelmingly disapprove of Ohio continuing to provide tax incentives for new data centers. The opposition crossed all party lines with consistent opposition from Republicans (52%), independents (76%), and Democrats (92%).” So much for cheerleading for data centers.

Husted, desperate to get out from under the issue, introduced a pathetic bill that would have done nothing to guarantee relief for taxpayers. Unsurprisingly, it failed on the Senate floor. In a floor speech last week, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) slammed the lame effort as a “fig leaf”:

It says that states can consider adopting a federal standard that would hold data centers responsible for rising electricity bills, and then they get two years to consider that. Candidly, they could do that today. We’ve already taken some action in Virginia. And what happens if nobody takes up that offer? Anything happen to these data centers? Does anything happen to those communities? Well, nothing.

I think we need real legislation on this. We need legislation that actually has some boundaries. This should not be optional. We have seen communities hit by skyrocketing electrical costs. We’ve seen communities where a lot of their water usage has gone up dramatically, and they’re concerned, concerned about the water table. We’ve seen these data centers sometimes literally intrude right into neighborhoods.

Trump’s cheerleading for unregulated AI in Husted’s home state made clear that Husted was not offering any kind of serious regulatory effort, just a last-gasp plea to save himself from voters’ wrath.

At a campaign stop, Brown ridiculed the idea that bill would “ask” utility companies to do something about rate costs. “‘We’ll hope they do better’ does not do anything,” he said. Brown’s campaign spokesperson slammed Husted on the issue, telling Newsweek Husted “led the charge to bring data centers to Ohio, forcing Ohioans to pay thousands more in higher electric bills and giving giant out-of-state corporations billions of dollars in out-of-control tax breaks.” She blamed Husted as the “face of the data centers,” and declared that taxpayers “should never be forced to subsidize the electricity costs of big corporations.”

Brown has said data centers should be required to pay the full cost of their utilities, without taxpayer subsidies, and that local communities should have input into whether centers are built. (“I start with this, that I have a healthy skepticism of big corporations that come into Ohio and demand tax breaks and then override any local concerns and then try to raise our electric rates,” he told a local TV outlet.)

Ohio, a red state that Trump won handily in 2024, is hardly an outlier on data centers. A CBS News/YouGov survey found that, by a stunning margin of 56 to 14% percent, voters said they would favor a candidate who opposed building a data center in their area over one who favor building one. Opposition to building local data centers includes a plurality of Republicans (37 to 26 percent) and an overwhelming majority of independents (58 to 12 percent).

Data centers may not be the top issue in Ohio or nationally, but they have come to serve as a stand-in for a host of issues — affordability, the outsized power of high-tech companies, soaring energy issues, Trump’s utter cluelessness, Republicans’ inability to cross their cult leader on issues that matter to constituents, and the looming divide between the rich and everyone else. The stubborn refusal of Trump, Husted, and other Republicans to listen to ordinary voters and respond to their genuine concerns about cost of living and quality of life has come back to haunt them. The result may be a stunning shift in Ohio from red to blue in just two years. And if that is where Ohio is heading, a state Trump won by 11 points in 2024, then we are heading for a historic blue wave.

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