Why most US politicians are not calling for data centre bans despite voters’ anger
American voters are furious about the energy-guzzling behemoths that drive artificial intelligence, but politicians in both main parties are cautious about backing all-out bans.
Annette Singh and Annie Cannelongo will vote in November in the midterm election battleground state of Ohio with one issue at the top of their minds: data centres.
The full-time mums say their fury over the massive computer-filled warehouses has consumed them ever since Amazon Web Services broke ground on a data centre site that stretches from the lush playground their kids use close to the elementary school that Singh’s child attends. Singh can no longer see deer peeking out from the trees and farmland that used to abut the park, and Cannelongo, her friend, laments that she can now hear the roaring highway from her house.
Their opposition to data centres has led Singh to collect signatures at her book club and in her suburban neighbourhood for a long-shot ballot initiative to ban them statewide. This campaign is hardly a one-off. Voters across the United States are concerned that the centres are driving up electricity prices and polluting the air. More than 70% of Americans oppose building the centres in their local area, according to a recent Gallup survey.
“It affects me personally,” said Cannelongo, 46, a former teacher. (Jeff Bezos, executive chairman of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)
The political energy is slowly beginning to catch up to voter anger. Lawmakers in both parties who have touted the centres as economic boons in their states are backpedalling.
Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine paused new tax breaks for the centres last month after an independent report estimated that they had cost the state more than US$1 billion in lost revenue last year. And Republicans and Democrats running for office say they want AI companies to offset their electricity usage to tame skyrocketing power bills.
But few politicians are embracing grassroots demands for a pause or ban on data centre construction, which some on the left see as a missed opportunity for Democrats to distinguish themselves ahead of a midterm election that they hope will hinge on cost-of-living concerns.
Democrats are divided because some trade unions support the centres, which create construction jobs, and because the powerful industry behind them has poured millions into attacking political opponents. Republicans have largely supported the centres, spurred by President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic backing, and have only recently been raising concerns as they hear from their enraged base.
The data centres’ footprint encompasses states that are midterm battlegrounds and will be crucial to determining which party controls the House and the Senate next year. Ohio is home to more than 200 data centres, the sixth-most of any state, according to data compiled by the industry group Data centre Map. Georgia, Virginia and Texas host even more of the centres.
A handful of progressive leaders, including independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic Republican Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have pushed legislation to temporarily ban data centre construction. Local lawmakers in more than 10 states also introduced bills this year to pause construction. Last week, residents of Monterey Park, California approved the nation’s first permanent ban on data centres, with more than 86% of voters supporting the prohibition.
But even Sanders-endorsed candidates in competitive races, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine, have not taken up that mantle.
“What I don’t want to do is inadvertently exit the playing field... and then cede the policymaking space to folks who don’t want to impose any limitations,” El-Sayed told The Washington Post.
On Monday (Tuesday NZT), Sanders called for the creation of a sovereign wealth fund seeded with a 50% tax on AI companies’ stock, so that Americans would own a piece of the industry. Sanders, in an interview, touted the policy.
“But I think it’s good politics, as well,” he said. “You are tapping into the concerns that the American people have, and you win elections when you do that.”
Democratic candidates are largely calling for smaller-scale policy interventions, with many saying the centres should pay for their electricity usage and stop obscuring details of their development from the communities in which they are built.
“We need to make sure if [data centres] are going to come here and benefit, you need to bring your own energy, you need to not make all of us pay for it,” Amy Acton, the Democrat running for Ohio governor, said in a recent roundtable.
Former senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat mounting a comeback bid in Ohio, said he was unaware of the push to get a data centre ban on the ballot in the state. “With data centres, we make sure the investors pay for electricity. Not the people who live in Zanesville or Coshocton or in Cambridge,” he said.
The issue animated a May debate among the Democratic candidates running for Michigan’s open Senate seat, with El-Sayed calling artificial intelligence a “tsunami” coming toward Americans that merits regulations of the same stringency as those governing public utilities. State Senator Mallory McMorrow touted her plan to tax the industry to pay for job training, and Representative Haley Stevens, the most centrist Democrat in the race, said she supported building the centres so long as they pay for their own resources. “I’m eager to see Michigan lead on the moonshots of the 21st century,” she said.
Many Republican candidates previously followed the lead of Trump, who signed an executive order last summer to speed data centre construction. But in recent months, more are beginning to respond to grassroots anger.
The Republican candidates for governor and Senate in Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Jon Husted, have a history of backing the centres. But both have recently expressed concern about the centres’ electricity usage and said they should offset it. “The goal is to support America’s growing technology infrastructure while helping ensure reliable, affordable energy for local residents,” Husted said in a statement. The senator joined Trump for a roundtable with technology companies in March to celebrate their leaders signing a pledge to offset their electricity costs. Former congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, says data centres need to pay for their energy.
“We’re going to have to grapple with it,” said Alex Triantafilou, chair of the Ohio Republican Party, pointing to an uptick in community-level anger on the right.
To the activists pushing for sweeping change, the response has not been swift or substantive enough.
“The big corporations that have money are donating to both sides, so it’s hard for anyone to oppose them,” said Cannelongo, who has not organised for the moratorium but supports other efforts.
AI companies have poured tens of millions of dollars into the US midterm elections, backing pro-AI candidates and working to defeat those who seek to regulate the industry. Many unions, which have considerable leverage in the Democratic Party, also support data centres, which experts say create thousands of short-term construction jobs but fewer permanent ones.
“These are creating good union jobs, both in the construction, but also in the keeping them secure and maintaining them,” said Tim Burga, president of the Ohio AFL-CIO.
In Ohio, 71% of voters said in a recent poll that they support a temporary ban on data centres. Majorities said data centres have a bad effect on the environment, energy prices and the quality of life of people who live near them.
In a statement, an Amazon spokesman said the company is committed to delivering “meaningful local benefits“ to communities and has invested $70b in Ohio since 2016.
“There are folks that believe that if the Democratic Party would become a party of no data centres that a Democratic Party could … run the table,” said Chris Gibbs, chair of the Ohio Democratic Party’s rural caucus.
Gibbs said that would be shortsighted, however, and that the better path is to help communities strike better deals with tech companies so they benefit more financially from the centres’ presence.
“Just to be the party of ‘no’ all the time I don’t think is good for the Democratic Party’s future,” Gibbs said.
For Singh and Cannelongo, the slow-moving debate has been hard to watch.
“This area is so great,” Singh, 36, a political independent, said of the peaceful Columbus suburb. “I feel like this taints it a little bit. Like puts a black spot on it.”
“I’m frustrated,” she added. “I want better politicians.”