WASHINGTON In debates and advertisements ahead of the midterm elections, Democratic candidates for Senate consistently press their opponents on artificial intelligence data center policy, often as a proxy for voter fears about the economy and local effects.
In Ohio, former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown calls Republican incumbent Sen. Jon Husted the face of data centers.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., tied the vote by opponent Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., for the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill health and tax cuts measure last year to data centers.
James Talarico accuses his Senate race opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, of selling off Texas to data center firms.
Candidates of both parties also attack each others campaign donations from Big Tech groups and investments in data center companies. Both Pro-AI and regulation-focused groups are spending millions on candidates.
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Democrats sought to tie data centers to rising energy costs and the larger issue of affordability; polling data appears to support that choice.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in July and August found 50% of U.S. adults think data centers are mostly bad for home energy costs, compared with 38% in January.
Those polled also got more pessimistic about data centers effects on the environment, jobs, tax revenue and quality of life for those living nearby.
Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said because voters believe data centers are the cause of their higher electricity bills, the construction projects are part of affordability concerns.
President (Donald) Trump campaigned for office in 2024 saying he was going to make things more affordable, was going to break down inflation, and he hasnt delivered on that, Cassino said. And that means its a real point of vulnerability for Republicans.
As a result, he said, Democrats are hitting Republicans really hard on the need to regulate data centers.
Pocketbook issues
In a Senate debate this month in Georgia, Ossoff used last years budget reconciliation bill, which included tax breaks that he said are used by data center companies, to criticize Collins.
Just think about this, when you are paying more for your health insurance, when a hospital in your community is closing down, Ossoff said. Mike Collins voted to take that money out of your pocket and out of your community and give it instead to data center developers.
Collins, in turn, said he favored local control over data center decisions.
Talaricos race with Paxton highlights the local nature of the data center backlash, with ads tying data centers to the cost of living and to accusations of corruption against Paxton.
The data centers bankrolled Paxton, they get tax breaks and you get stuck with the bill, Talarico said in one ad. In another, he promised that, if elected, he would take on the data centers raising our costs.
Husted served as lieutenant governor before his appointment to the Senate last year when fellow Republican JD Vance became vice president. In an ad, Brown pointed to tax breaks his state agreed to for tech companies building data centers.
Husted gave away two and a half billion dollars to these out-of-state corporations and billionaires, Brown said in the ad. He gave up Ohios money, our tax money, to Meta, a company worth $2 trillion, to make sure they come to Ohio.
Other Brown ads connect data centers to rising residential electricity costs. He also pledged to require the data centers pay the full cost of their electricity, not you.
Husted sponsored the Senate version of a bill, dubbed the Ratepayer Protection Act, that would encourage states to adopt standards to make data centers take on the cost of electrical grid upgrades needed to meet their new energy demand. The House-passed version stalled last month in the Senate after Democrats said it wasnt strong enough.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson debate Oct. 15 at the Gracie Theatre in Bangor, Maine.
In a debate last week between Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, Collins responded to Jacksons data center attacks by pointing to her support for the Husted bill.
She also said guardrails on energy use are particularly important because of Maines high energy prices, which she blamed on Jackson, who previously served as state Senate president.
Jackson agreed on the need for real guardrails to ensure data centers dont cause higher electricity costs for other consumers or hurt water quality.
Democrats data center arguments seem to be part of a successful strategy. Inside Elections rates Georgia as Lean Democrat, while Maine, Ohio and Texas, all seats held by Republicans, are rated as Toss-up.
Effectiveness
Cassino cautioned that voters may not care about Capitol Hill procedural votes. Anything incumbents say about, oh, this is what Im doing to protect you, is going to ring hollow because everyone sees their electricity prices going up, he said.
Ray La Raja, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-director of the UMass-Amherst Poll, said Republicans arent likely to see success arguing that data centers are needed to beat China in an AI race.
When people see these huge constructions in their backyard, that is much more tangible than any economic, national security competition with China, La Raja said.
However, he sees a possibility for Republicans to develop a long-term strategy to tell voters why they support data centers.
If you want to allay peoples fears be very concrete about the benefits that are going to be coming into the community, La Raja said, adding that benefits could include subsidies or promises to keep energy prices down or build new facilities that serve the community, recreation.
In the Michigan Senate debate this month, Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers tried such a tactic. If a community wants one of these facilities every dollar of the generated property tax should go to defray the cost of everyone that lives in that municipality, he said. Dollar for dollar, it should go down.
Rogers previously expressed support for Michigan pausing data center construction for a year. His Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, said at the debate that he supports terms of engagement for data centers, though he did not specify.
Inside Elections rates the Michigan Senate race as Tilt Democratic.
Beyond the midterms, Darrell M. West, a senior fellow in the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said this years vote could be very formative.
If the candidates who were supporting data centers end up losing, thats going to encourage the critics to enact even tougher rules, West said. If things go the other way, it could take the wind out of that sail.
But any federal restrictions in the next Congress would be up against Trumps firm support for AI and data centers.
West said that support is making things even more complicated for Republicans running this year.
Theyre getting local pressure to slow down the development of data centers, and Trump is telling the country, dont worry about this, data centers are not a problem, West said. And voters dont believe that anymore.
