Republicans Confront a Data Center ‘Shitstorm’ in the Midterms

No one wants to be a poster child for data centers anymore, least of all Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

He will get a chance to avert that fate Wednesday with a vote in the Senate to pass a largely symbolic bill aimed at protecting consumers from the power-hungry facilities and, Republicans hope, neutralizing what’s lately become a worrying political anchor.

The giant energy-intensive installations had been hailed as economic boons by many local leaders, but vast swaths of the public now blame them for driving up electricity bills and harming people’s quality of life, all for the benefit of faraway billionaires seen as pushing dangerous artificial intelligence. They are primed to be one of the defining issues of the election.

Husted has faced withering attacks from Democrats over his support for investments and tax incentives for data centers during his tenure as the state’s lieutenant governor. Former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Husted’s Democratic opponent who’s seeking a return to the Senate next year, has dubbed the senator “the face of data centers” in Ohio, and has spent millions of dollars on ads to make the charge stick.

And later this month, LCV Victory Fund, the political action committee of the League of Conservation Voters, will spend another $2 million, hammering Husted on data centers in campaign ads, the group confirmed Tuesday.

Republican leadership, eyeing the close race in ruby-red Ohio, felt concerned enough to keep the Senate in session this week to vote on Husted’s Ratepayer Protection Act. The legislation, which sailed through the House in a huge 417-3 vote, would direct state public utility commissions to consider making data centers responsible for their own energy costs, and give lawmakers a way to answer the pressing concern for voters.

“This is our only opportunity, literally, to have something on the president’s desk that’s a bipartisan vote that will require data centers to build their own infrastructure and give ratepayers relief,” Husted told reporters Tuesday. “It is the only game in town. It is the only bill that has a chance to get to the president’s desk before we get to the election.”

But Senate Democrats view Husted’s proposal as little more than an empty promise since it’s states that set electricity rates and the legislation wouldn’t actually require them to do anything. They blocked Husted’s attempt to pass it quickly on the Senate floor last week, and are expected to unite against it again before lawmakers leave town.

“The bill is a fraud,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. “The bill is optional. Here we need some real actions on data centers, and what does the Republican senator from Ohio come up with: something that is optional.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said in a post on X: “It’s just fakery to try to fool voters into forgetting that Republicans spent the entire term trying to stop states from regulating AI (as requested by the AI companies).”

Republicans believe Wednesday’s procedural vote, which will require 60 senators to advance, including at least seven Democrats, will help Husted and other vulnerable Republican senators up for reelection this year — even if it fails.

“It’s an important message to send to voters that we’re listening to their concerns,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview. “It’s not too late to be able to spread that message. It’ll be interesting to see what the Democrats choose to do. If they vote against it, then I think that’s a clear contrast for the election.”

Whether a failed vote will make for a meaningful contrast is debatable. But public sentiment against the rapid surge in data infrastructure is not.

Voters’ disapproval for data centers skyrocketed over the last year, shifting from what was initially a locally focused issue to a national debate roiling state and congressional races across the country. The about-face in public opinion prompted candidates in both parties to redefine their positions, including potential 2028 presidential candidates, and across the country it has spurred a flood of campaign ads particularly harmful to Republicans

“It’s a tailor-made, perfect shitstorm, combining affordability and corporate corruption and greed,” said one GOP pollster, granted anonymity to speak candidly and citing both data centers and AI as among the biggest concerns for voters this fall. “Every ad says, ‘Our energy bills are high because this candidate gave data centers a sweetheart deal,’ and it’s a very, very powerful message.”

And for Republicans, this pollster said, it’s a “net negative” compared with Democrats because “Republicans are in charge right now.”

The reversal among voters happened quickly. Last year, polling from HeatMap found Americans evenly split over whether they’d back a data center being built nearby. Now, 75% said they’d oppose one. That’s echoed in findings from Gallup and the Pew Research Center, which also found data centers hemorrhaging support.

Private polling, conducted by another Democratic super PAC and obtained by The Washington Sun, drew similar responses. In Ohio’s 15th Congressional District, 75% of voters disapprove of data center development and 23% favor it.

LCV Victory Fund also conducted private polling on data centers — shared with The Sun — and found in January that 44% of voters blamed data centers and artificial intelligence for rising energy costs. By July, 75% said data centers were driving up their energy bills. Sara Schreiber, LCV Victory Fund’s director, said the swing in public opinion has been “extremely dramatic” and that “voters of pretty much every background are extremely fed up with Big Tech.”

Husted is hardly the only Republican lawmaker looking to diffuse that bipartisan frustration — even as the party’s most visible figure, President Donald Trump, vocally supports the projects needed to support AI.

Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Michigan), who’s running in a hotly contested race, flagged in an interview this weekend that he has “disagreed with the president around data centers,” airing TV ads highlighting his assertions that he “stood up to my own party” and “voted against giving your tax dollars to data centers.” He’s one of several Republicans who have called for local control over the facilities.

But Democrats are looking to tie Republicans like Barrett back to their votes on Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which included tax breaks for tech companies.

Schrieber’s group is running ads in six House districts, including in Michigan’s 7th, blaming the officeholders for taking “data center money” and giving data centers “a tax break.”

“Voters are looking for who they can trust on this, and I don’t think they’ve made up their mind on it yet,” Schrieber said. “What is true is that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress had a lot of chances to do something on this, set a different tone, hold these companies accountable, and they not only passed on that, but they also decided to give massive tax breaks to the companies.”

In Arizona, Jonathan Nez, a Democrat running for a GOP-leaning Arizona seat, is pledging to claw back “the billions in tax breaks” that Republican Rep. Eli Crane “gave the data centers.” In an interview, the former Navajo president said the issue has touched a nerve with voters because “the folks that are pushing data centers are large corporations” and “there’s a negative perspective on the billionaires and the wealthy, the elite in this country.”

“Some of these data centers that are being built right now, folks didn’t know about it, and now once they find out what’s happening, they feel like they’ve been lied to,” he said.

A spokesman for Crane, in an emailed statement, called Nez “a political insider who’s cozied up to big wind and solar corporations threatening Rural Arizona’s land” and “now he’s attacking me to cover his own tracks.”

Not every Republican candidate is running away from the massive technological build-outs. In Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has struggled in his race for Senate, suggested building data centers in rural parts of the country.

“There’s plenty of open space in Texas that we can put data centers,” Paxton said at an event this week.

Still, most Republicans believe their party needs to be more sensitive to voter concerns about data centers, even if Husted’s bill won’t necessarily result in lower electricity costs before the November elections.

“I think it’s more of a confidence builder,” Cornyn said. “You know, people worry about things that may not come true, but I think everybody’s sort of on the same page from the president on down that these power, these data centers, shouldn’t raise electricity rates. They don’t have independent power. So I think trying to reinforce that message is a good one.”