These Midterm Races Will Decide Data Centers’ Political Fate

Welcome back to Power Play! Each week, senior writer Molly Taft tackles a topic around this midterm season’s biggest issue: data centers. If you’ve got a question or thought for the column, feel free to shoot Molly an email at [email protected] or reach them securely on Signal at mollytaft.76.

From surveillance and DOGE to Big Tech money and religious extremism, the midterms have never been more WIRED. Data centers are no exception: The public has rapidly turned on them since the beginning of the year.

The opposition is bipartisan, with many Republicans making a rare break from President Donald Trump. Candidates on both sides of the aisle are trying to attack their opponents for being pro–data center (or not anti–data center enough). I’ve spotted at least five candidates who have been given the derogatory “Data Center [Name]” moniker by their opponents, in an attempt to highlight their connections to the industry. (That includes two guys named Derek/Derrick getting this treatment.)

While polling shows that pocketbook issues are likely to be top of voters’ minds, data centers are a potent-enough issue that they could swing tight races—and ultimately tip the balance of power in Congress. Here are some of the races WIRED is keeping an eye on as we approach November 3.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a memo in August warning that Democrat Sherrod Brown, running for Senate in Ohio, was hitting his opponent, Senator Jon Husted, so hard on data centers that it could tip the outcome of the race, calling it “a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.” Brown has called Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio,” running ads that blame Husted for welcoming data centers to the state and driving energy bills up.

Senate Democrats have taken up Brown’s cause, torpedoing a bill sponsored by Husted and modeled after the White House’s ratepayer protection pledge, with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling the bill “toothless.”

Data centers have also seeped into many other toss-up Senate races, including in Michigan, Iowa, and Texas. But the Ohio race is still the top one to watch here.

All 435 seats in the House are up for grabs, and data centers have become flash points in dozens of races across the country. Among races labeled toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, I found numerous examples of candidates running data-center-related ads:

• In Michigan’s 7th district, Will Lawrence used local opposition to data centers to help win a tough Democratic primary. Lawrence is now facing off against Republican Tom Barrett and has aired several data-center-related ads, both attacking Barrett and advertising Lawrence’s promise to “stand up to corporate power.”
• In Pennsylvania’s 8th district, Republican incumbent Rob Bresnahan has run ads promising to be tough on the industry—despite holding data-center-related stocks and a previously friendly stance. His Democratic challenger, Paige Cognetti, has also run ads attacking the industry.
• In Ohio’s 9th, Democratic incumbent Marcy Kaptur has run ads railing against what she says is incumbent Derek Merrin’s history of giving tax breaks to data centers. (The ads call him “Data Center Derek.”) Merrin claims that Kaptur is misrepresenting his vote on a broader bill.
• In Wisconsin’s 3rd district, Democrat Rebecca Cooke has aired attack ads against incumbent Derrick van Orden’s history of taking contributions from data center developers, dubbing him “DC Derrick.” (Sound familiar?) Van Orden has also shot back by highlighting Cooke’s ties to the tech industry, claiming she is “responsible for covering up pristine Wisconsin farmland” with data centers.
• In New York’s 17th district, incumbent Republican Mike Lawler has aired an ad slamming Democratic opponent Cait Conley’s past statements that the Hudson Valley “needs” data centers.

At least 20 candidates in the 36 gubernatorial races have promised to enact some kind of data center moratorium if elected, according to research from Multistate. The only true hyperscale moratorium in place in the US right now was signed in July by New York governor Kathy Hochul, who holds a comfortable lead ahead of challenger Bruce Blakeman (who supports data center development).

Candidates without much daylight between them have still tried to gain the upper hand on the issue. In Wisconsin’s tight gubernatorial race, Republican Tom Tiffany has attacked Democrat David Crowley with ads calling him “Data Center David.” Both candidates say they support restrictions on the industry.

In states that have been hotbeds for data center activity, some candidates in tight races have been forced to pivot on the issue. Nowhere is this clearer than in Texas, where incumbent governor Greg Abbott has gone from welcoming data center development to putting a de facto moratorium on permits in less than a year. His opponent, Gina Hinojosa, says Abbott hasn’t gone far enough to regulate the industry.

Voters in eight states are looking at more than 30 local ballot measures around data centers. Once again, Ohio is a standout here: It’s responsible for more than half of those measures, from local moratoriums to referendums around rezoning.

What We’re Writing

WIRED science editor Brian Kahn and I got exclusive access to a startup that wants to pull water from the air using excess heat from data centers. While atmospheric water-harvesting technology has been around for a while, the startup has a unique spin. Atoco uses materials known as metal organic frameworks, or MOFs, which won one of its founders the Nobel Prize last year. The company’s previous prototypes have all needed to be hooked up to the grid to generate enough heat to extract water from the MOFs. The new version, though, only needs waste heat from industrial facilities—like data centers—to produce water, even in arid areas.

What We’re Reading

• In Memphis, Tennessee, home of Elon Musk’s SpaceX data centers, the city council postponed a vote on a data center moratorium. Business Insider has more on the “chaotic” meeting.
• Bloomberg reports that Oracle used trucks to ship in natural gas to a data center outside Salt Lake City to keep it online for more than a year—and is considering a similar move in New Mexico, where pipeline delays have held up a big project.
• As the midterms approach, environmental groups are flooding the zone with ads about the rush to build AI infrastructure powered by fossil fuels—just as Congress prepares to debate permitting reform. Heatmap has more.