Data Center Foes Win Big In Tuesday’s Primaries

The movement to curb the data center boom emerged Wednesday with new political muscle.

Primary voters rewarded progressive candidates in Michigan and Kansas calling for tough crackdowns on data centers, intensifying the split within the Democratic Party over the right approach to regulate the industry.

William Lawrence, co-founder of the progressive Sunrise Movement, won the Democratic primary for Michigan's Lansing area 7th District. And Abdul El-Sayed, who nabbed Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary over more-moderate Rep. Haley Stevens, was one of the earliest midterm candidates to embrace data center concerns.

"People really effing hate data centers," El-Sayed said at a July event.

His platform, released in January when he was far behind in polling, called for electric grid, water and other protections, and he recently took things a step further by endorsing local and state — but not federal — moratoria until Congress can enact nationwide protections.

El-Sayed will face former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) in the November general election. Rogers backs letting communities decide on data center development but wants any additional tax revenue from the facilities to go to property tax refunds.

El-Sayed joked in a Wednesday speech that Rogers “is a guy who wants to put a data center in your backyard so he can make himself feel a little bit more manly by making an AI video,” a reference to an altered image promoted by a Rogers consultant that greatly accentuated his muscles.

Lawrence focused a significant part of his campaign against more moderate and better-funded Democrats on opposing data centers, making it the subject of his first television advertisement and many campaign events.

“It turns out that if you’re not taking money from Silicon Valley, you can fight hard for a federal moratorium on data centers,” Lawrence told supporters in his Tuesday night victory speech.

“Tonight the people of Michigan’s 7th District sent a clear message: they are tired of Silicon Valley billionaires and DC insiders determining the future of our towns and our country,” he said in a statement.

Aru Shiney-Ajay, the Sunrise Movement's executive director who supports Lawrence and attended his victory party, said his campaign and the salience of data center opposition could energize broader activism on the environment and climate change.

"I do think there’s a sort of political resurgence of climate, including the new forms that it takes," Shiney-Ajay said Tuesday night. "And I do think that there is a new form the climate movement is starting to take and it's very related to the blooming growth of AI.”

Lawrence beat Bridget Brink and Matt Maasdam in the primary. Both support environmental protections from data centers and for communities to be able to decide whether they are built.

He’ll face incumbent Rep. Tom Barrett (R) in the November general election in what is expected to be one of the country’s most competitive races. Barrett told POLITICO he’s taking the challenge seriously.

"The two other candidates that ran just really didn’t take him seriously the entire time, we’re not going to make that same mistake," the Republican said after the race was called. “We are not in any way going to be taking this for granted or taking it lightly."

The politics of data centers has been shifting and positions cross party lines — especially at the state and local level. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are mulling data center legislation, but a national moratorium or broad restrictions have no chance of becoming law during the current Congress.

In the Kansas gubernatorial primaries, backlash to the data center explosion featured prominently in both Democratic and Republican contests. Candidates on both sides presented a range of approaches to regulate the facilities that have rapidly popped up throughout the state.

State Sen. Cindy Holscher capitalized on strong grassroots opposition to data centers — and her own skepticism of them — to clinch the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

After initially embracing data center expansion, she switched positions and advocated for a statewide moratorium. Her leading opponent, state Sen. Ethan Corson, called for a middle-of-the-road approach.

On the Republican side, Ty Masterson, also a state senator, faced attacks from his opponents for supporting tax incentives to lure data centers to Kansas. But those criticisms didn’t end up significantly weakening his front-runner status, and he easily advanced to the general election.

Data center critics haven't always won, though. Democrat Alex Bores in New York’s 12th District and Liban Mohamed in Utah’s 1st District lost their primaries in June after campaigning on crackdowns.

Emilio Perez Ibarguen contributed to this report.