How Data Centers Could Upend the Midterms

The same issue that ended the career of one of Utah’s most powerful Republicans on Wednesday is now following candidates into governor’s mansions and congressional battlegrounds across the country, as voter anger over artificial intelligence infrastructure reshapes the political map heading into November.

State Senate President J. Stuart Adams lost his primary election after backing a sprawling proposed data center campus near the Great Salt Lake. Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry lost his seat over the same project.

“Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,” Perry said after conceding.

The losses are the most dramatic illustration yet of an issue that has moved in a matter of months from local planning disputes to a national political liability with the potential to flip seats in Congress and statehouses from Florida to Michigan to Pennsylvania.

The Electoral Track Record

Utah is the latest in a string of elections where data center votes have cost officials their seats. In Cascade Locks, Oregon, two port commissioners were recalled in 2023 after supporting negotiations for a proposed data center. In Warrenton, Virginia, five town council members who backed an Amazon project were voted out over two election cycles. In Festus, Missouri, voters in April replaced half the city council after members backed a $6 billion proposal. One of the winning candidates called the outcome an “uprising.”

Gary Marcus, emeritus professor at New York University and author of the newsletter Marcus on AI, told Newsweek the political reckoning was always coming and has only just begun.

“The backlash is intensifying because the public is waking up to the reality that AI is becoming more about making a few people rich than about helping society,” Marcus said. “Politicians should find a way to represent what their constituents want, which is an AI that is in the interest of society.”

The pattern has spread beyond city councils. A Democrat won a Georgia Public Service Commission seat in 2025 by arguing that ratepayers should not be made to subsidize data center electricity demand, criticizing a 10,000-megawatt grid expansion approved to meet projected needs from the industry. Virginia’s state legislative races that same year showed what organized opposition could accomplish at a higher level, as the League of Conservation Voters ran ads targeting incumbents over their data center records and candidates who positioned themselves against the facilities won those contests.

The backlash has not stayed at the ballot box. A township treasurer in Saline, Michigan, resigned in May citing death threats tied to a 1.4-gigawatt data center project linked to OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate initiative. Recall efforts against the board followed. Wisconsin saw four data center proposals canceled and one paused after local pushback, and the executive director of Healthy Climate Wisconsin said data centers are now the top issue policymakers across the state hear from their communities.

New York offered a different kind of signal on Tuesday. More than $26 million in combined spending from pro-AI and pro-regulation super PACs flooded a Manhattan Democratic primary to replace retiring Representative Jerry Nadler, and both candidates who emerged at the top backed AI regulations and skepticism of unchecked data center growth. Money, it turned out, could not buy the argument.

A Food and Water Watch organizer working in Pennsylvania’s swing districts said that in her 10 years of organizing, she had never seen anything like the groundswell of opposition, especially in communities that found themselves targeted for a project. Every congressional and gubernatorial ad mentioning data centers identified by the political advertising tracker AdImpact this cycle has been critical of the facilities. Most attack Republicans for supporting them.

The Issue That Cuts Across Party Lines

Data centers were once welcomed by politicians in both parties as engines of tax revenue and jobs. They are now one of the rare issues in a polarized political environment that unites environmentalists, populist Trump supporters and suburban parents worried about their electric bills.

A May Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Americans oppose having a data center built in their community-a higher opposition rate than any Gallup has recorded for nuclear power plant construction since 2001. A Reuters and Ipsos survey put opposition at 57 percent, with just 14 percent of respondents comfortable living near one.

Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University and executive director of the FDU Poll, told Newsweek that data centers have already become a major issue in primary elections as affordability has become central to U.S. politics and energy prices have become "the current face of affordability."

"Since the pandemic, affordability has become a key issue in U.S. politics, and energy prices are the current face of affordability," Cassino said. "In our polling, voters support anything to bring down their energy bills, but banning data centers is pretty much the most popular option."

Natalie Kerby of AI Forensics, an AI accountability group, told Newsweek the facilities draw opposition because they make abstract anxieties about AI concrete and local.

“Data centers can be a strong target for channeling distrust in AI because they bring together a series of concerns, such as the environment, energy costs, and economic factors, that can plug into pre-existing movements,” Kerby said. “This vision of the future concentrates the power and rewards of AI in the hands of a very few, while leaving many communities vulnerable.”

A Pew Research Center survey of more than 8,500 U.S. adults found Americans are far more likely to view data centers negatively when it comes to their impact on energy bills, environmental strain and nearby living conditions, with significantly more people saying they are bad rather than good for the environment and household electricity costs.

Democratic candidates are also linking data centers to electricity costs. In Michigan's U.S. Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed released a data center plan calling for "No rate hikes," saying data centers should pay for their own energy demand and that costs "cannot be passed onto ratepayers."

The industry itself is getting the warning. Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur and investor, posted on X this week that the fight against data centers “has nothing to do with data centers” and has become “a proxy for the hate towards AI and the concentration and accumulation of wealth it’s creating.”

Cuban urged the major AI companies to stop spending money on politicians and instead go directly to affected communities. “No matter how much money you pay to buy politicians and races, you will lose,” he wrote. “One thing I have learned is being hated is not good for business.”

The House Map

Of the 69 House districts expected to be competitive this election cycle, 40 have data centers either planned or under construction, according to an analysis of Data Center Map data by Politico. Republicans hold most of those seats and a five-seat House majority going into November.

The exposure is sharpest in Pennsylvania, where four Republican-held seats are rated competitive by major forecasters and where Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro has concentrated his data center expansion plans-including a $20 billion Amazon investment-in the same eastern districts those incumbents represent.

In the Lehigh Valley’s 7th District, held by freshman Republican Ryan Mackenzie after a narrow 2024 win, opposition is growing around a proposed six-building, 5-million-square-foot data center complex across the street from a high school in South Whitehall Township. Cook Political Report rates the seat a toss-up.

Chris Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, told CNBC the issue has piled onto an already difficult environment for Republican incumbents. “They’re really caught between counteracting forces,” Borick said. “The challengers are at the advantage on this, because a lot of this is going to be, rightly or wrongly, laid at the feet of the incumbents.”

Iowa Republican Zach Nunn, who represents a district with 31 data centers planned and 33 already operating, said in a statement that his state is a model for how AI investment and workforce development can coexist. “But I also hear from Iowans who don’t want higher utility bills or sweetheart deals for out-of-state tech companies,” Nunn said in a press statement. “And they’re right to be cautious.”

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This story was originally published June 25, 2026 at 6:11 PM.