Politics

How data centers became the new midterms bogeyman

Published

8 months ago

February 26, 2026

Data centers, once popular with elected officials in both parties, are fast becoming a midterms bogeyman.

Democratic governors are racing to rein in new warehouse projects they once offered up millions of dollars in tax incentives to secure as they face voters furious over soaring electric bills. And President Donald Trump, who has slashed red tape around the industry he’s lauded as a job engine, used his Tuesday State of the Union address to announce he’s told major tech companies to build their own power plants to shield ratepayers from further hikes.

It’s a remarkable pivot by leaders of both parties. And it reflects the rapidly shifting politics around data centers they had hailed as economic generators but are now retreating from as voters blame their proliferation for rising utility costs — part of an overall frustration with high prices that is dominating the midterms.

“The fact that everyone is talking about this all of a sudden shows how quickly this issue is moving and that politicians are reflecting the frustration that people are feeling over paying so much on their energy bills while data centers get tax breaks,” said Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist and co-founder of climate advocacy group Evergreen Action.

These recent contortions also show both parties are still grappling with the way forward on an increasingly potent political issue.

Democrats harnessed voters’ frustrations over rising utility bills — and their fears that power-hungry data centers could push them higher — to win governor’s offices in New Jersey and Virginia and oust two Republicans on Georgia’s utility regulating commission last fall.

Voters’ worries haven’t ebbed. The POLITICO Poll found in mid-January that voters’ chief concerns about data centers involved household costs. Asked about the drawbacks to building data centers in the U.S., 29 percent of Americans said it would mean higher electricity bills, 24 percent said an increased risk of blackouts and 23 percent said the projects would cost taxpayer money.

Both parties have seized on making tech companies pay for their power as a salve.

Just six months ago, Trump declared he was accelerating federal permitting for data centers and headed to western Pennsylvania to praise companies for investing tens of billions of dollars in energy infrastructure as part of his push to be the “world’s No. 1 superpower in artificial intelligence.”

But on Tuesday, the president said he was negotiating with the companies behind data centers to build their own power plants to secure their power supply “while at the same time lowering prices of electricity” for Americans.

Trump was light on the details about what his “ratepayer protection pledge” actually meant in practice, though the White House said tech companies are expected to head to Washington next week to sign the agreements. But the president has been signaling such a step since at least January, when he said he was working with Microsoft to “ensure that Americans don’t ‘pick up the tab’” for data centers’ power consumption. He also banded together with Democratic governors to push grid operator PJM to control energy prices and tech companies to shoulder the burden of power costs.

Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based GOP strategist, said the shift shows Trump and his team “don’t want to be on the wrong side of this.”

“This is smart by the administration to recognize that there are concerns about energy prices and water usage,” said Steinhauser, who serves as CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, a group that backs more AI industry regulation. “They don’t want to be seen as allowing the companies to accelerate without any input from the community, they don’t want to be seen as on the side of allowing energy prices to go up.”

Democrats don’t, either.

At least half a dozen Democratic governors — several of whom are potential 2028 presidential contenders — used their annual state-of-the-state addresses to pitch regulations or call to retract old sweeteners for an industry they had previously championed.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is pushing to hit pause on tax incentives he’s long touted to lure data centers to his state. Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is seeking to eliminate the tax breaks for tech companies she previously backed as a state lawmaker a decade ago, while looking to impose new water-use fees.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was positioning her state as a “national leader in AI research and innovation,” has rolled out plans to make data center operators pay more for energy or supply their own. Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont signaled his state would look to “slow down new data centers,” unless they add more power generation.

And Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who streamlined permitting to help his state be “all in on AI,” is now calling on his legislature to codify a set of “responsible infrastructure development” standards for data center developers — including hiring locally and bringing their own power generation — as he looks to mitigate voters’ concerns. A survey released Wednesday from Pennsylvania pollster Quinnipiac University showed 68 percent of registered voters would oppose a data center being built in their community, including 81 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans.

Shapiro insisted his new guardrails were “not a shift” when asked last week about the policy rollout. Instead, he cast them as part of his ongoing efforts to balance creating jobs with “holding down energy costs.”

“I’ve always been for the end-users having to bring their own power or generate new power and pay for it so we’re not burdening the local community,” Shapiro told Blue Light News on the sidelines of the National Governors Association winter meeting in Washington last week. “We just are more open about it, so anyone thinking about doing business in Pennsylvania now knows what those standards are going to be.”

The proliferation of data centers across battleground states has similarly pushed energy costs to the forefront of key congressional campaigns. Imposing guardrails on the artificial intelligence industry has become a rallying cry for insurgent candidates in primaries and an attack line in competitive districts. Calls are growing on both sides of the aisle for a moratorium on new projects.

Politicians are “beginning to catch up with where their constituents are” in opposing unregulated data center growth, said Mitch Jones, the managing director of policy and litigation for environmental firm Food & Water Watch, which is pushing for a construction pause.

But Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who has sketched out a similar set of rules for new projects in his state, argued that a “binary” approach to data centers was misguided.

“Oftentimes, when people talk about data centers, it’s either like what they’ve done in Northern Virginia, which is kind of like, ‘let them just run wild and do whatever they want to do.’ Or it’s like trying to put a ban on them. I don’t think either is the right answer,” Moore said in a brief interview at NGA. “I understand how this critical infrastructure is necessary for economic growth. … But industry cannot determine the rules.”

Politics

Democrats eye state supreme court races — this year and beyond

Published

6 hours ago

November 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Liberal groups have spent millions in a handful of battleground state supreme court races ahead of Tuesday’s elections, looking to lay the groundwork for Democrats to win control of more courts ahead of a crucial redistricting cycle.

At the center of the fight are races for Republican-majority state supreme courts in North Carolina and Ohio, where this year’s results could set the stage for Democrats to flip the makeup of the benches in 2028. National groups are also spending to defend the liberal majority on Michigan’s court and on an open seat in Montana, where voters will also decide whether judicial elections remain nonpartisan.

The investments are yet another reflection of how state supreme court elections have become national political battlegrounds. The high court justices have become arbiters of major disputes, from abortion rights to election integrity and redistricting. Those who win in the coming cycles will likely preside over challenges to congressional and legislative maps that are drawn in a handful of states after the midterm election — and then nationwide after the 2030 census.

Nowhere are the contests more heated than in North Carolina.

Democrats’ defense of a seat currently held by Anita Earls is “step No. 2” to flip the North Carolina Supreme Court, said Anderson Clayton, the state’s Democratic Party chair. “In 2028, we’re looking at being able to take three Republican seats on that court.”

Democrats lost four seats on the state supreme court in the 2020 and 2022 elections, and the Republican majority cleared the way for a Republican-led gerrymandering in 2023.

Clayton said her group has spent more than $1 million on the state supreme court race. Earls has also drawn support from national Democrats like Pete Buttigieg and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore.

“If we had won a state Supreme Court race then in 2020 in our state, Hakeem Jeffries would be speaker of the House right now,” said Clayton, adding that her group is trying to build the foundation for congressional majorities “in 2032 and beyond.”

The ACLU is among the groups making long-term investments in state supreme court races. It has poured $8 million into state supreme court races in North Carolina, Michigan and Montana this year, in addition to Georgia and Wisconsin races earlier this year, said Deirdre Schifeling, the group’s chief political and advocacy officer, making it one of the top spenders in these contests.

The ACLU’s multi-cycle strategy to build “pro-civil rights, civil liberties majorities” is also targeting Arizona, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio, Schifeling said. The group already set aside resources for supreme court races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2027 and will begin fundraising for the 2028 races early next year.

More than $14 million has been spent on television ads in North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio and Montana, most of it benefiting Democratic and liberal-leaning candidates, according to estimates from the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice. Most of the liberal candidates have also outraised their conservative competitors.

Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Megan Cavanagh, foreground center, and Justice Noah Hood, left, walk together during the Michigan Democratic Party State Endorsement Convention on April 19 in Detroit.

By contrast, the electoral headwinds have forced Republicans to defend statewide offices and state legislatures they currently control, leaving fewer resources for the judicial races.

Republican-aligned groups like the Republican State Leadership Committee — the party’s chief downballot campaign organization — have largely stayed on the sidelines this cycle after warning for months they were being swamped by Democrats. The organization’s judicial affiliate reported more than $5 million in expenditures across 2024 and 2025.

“Democrats understand what is at stake, and have dumped massive amounts of resources into these contests,” said RSLC President Edith Jorge-Tuñón in a statement. “The RSLC is fighting back with smart and targeted spending because the investments we make today will determine whether we are positioned to protect our majorities, compete in the next redistricting cycle, and secure Republican victories for years to come.”

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee — the party’s main redistricting-focused group — declined to discuss this year’s total spending in judicial races this year, but NDRC President John Bisognano said in a statement that “the upcoming 2026 and 2028 state supreme court elections are critical to the long-term fight to protect democracy.”

And those involved in supreme court fights said they believed spending will only increase down the road, particularly from major industry players.

“I think that the money flowing into those races from external interests tells the tale of what big money, big pharma, big data recognize about the next areas that they can seek to leverage and control to their benefit,” said Tish Gotell Faulks, the state courts director at the liberal Alliance for Justice Action. “Those interests are now turning to the state courts and seeking to capture those courts as well.”

Politics

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorses Republican Mike Rogers for Michigan Senate

Published

9 hours ago

November 1, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers in the Michigan Senate race on Sunday — a stunning break with her party that derails Democrats’ attempts to create a united front for Abdul El-Sayed.

Her endorsement comes just a few days after she said she was going to vote for El-Sayed.

The two former primary rivals have been locked in a public, escalating feud over El-Sayed’s and his allies’ criticism of Israel.

“Abdul said that I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away. And he’s right,” Stevens said in a video posted to social media on Sunday after she appeared at a Detroit church alongside Rogers.

“And that’s why I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today,” she said. “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.”