Data Centers Turn Sleepy Utility Races Into Political Battlegrounds

Once-sleepy utility board races across the South have turned into must-watch contests as Democrats try to wrest power from the Republicans who control energy prices in the region. Even Kamala Harris thinks so.

The former vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee headlined a Tuesday fundraiser for Democratic utility commission candidates in Georgia and Arizona, saying “the stakes are high” because “people cannot afford the basics.”

“It is about the importance for us of having people in those positions who are clear that clean energy is affordable energy,” Harris said.

Competitive utility board races are galvanizing green groups and fueling a fierce GOP campaign to hold onto power. And as the national Democratic party tries to own the affordability message, top-of-the-ticket 2026 candidates are increasingly backing their allies in those contests.

“It matters who’s representing us,” Keisha Lance Bottoms, Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, said at an event last month while campaigning with utility board candidate Peter Hubbard. “Not just in the governor's mansion, not just in the Senate, not just in our House and our Senate in the state of Georgia, but also who's representing us on the Public Service Commission.”

Public utility commissioners determine how much customers pay for power and how AI data centers connect to the electric grid — making these obscure state regulators some of the most powerful officials shaping the nation’s energy mix.

Most state utility regulators are appointed by governors. But in 10 states, voters elect them. Next month, 19 commissioner seats will be on the ballot in nine states across the South, Southwest and Great Plains. All of them are controlled by Republican majorities, except Nebraska’s utility boards, which are nonpartisan.

At the center of the fight is Georgia’s Public Service Commission. Democrats unseated two Republicans there last year by leveraging voter frustration with soaring power bills and data centers — and the party is working to flip another seat in the midterms to win a majority for the first time in decades.

Democratic strategists and green groups are angling to replicate Georgia’s 2025 blueprint to gain a foothold on utility boards in other states, such as Arizona.

Republicans have responded with a mix of tactics. In Alabama, the legislature passed bills changing the configuration of the commission to dilute competitive races. In Louisiana, one PSC candidate is campaigning on the same themes of energy affordability and data center oversight.

“Growth is good, jobs are good, but ratepayer protection has to come first,” Republican commission candidate and Louisiana state Rep. Stephanie Hilferty said in a campaign video about data centers.

The political scramble comes as national electricity prices rise faster than inflation, even as wages have fallen, federal data shows. A report from the consumer advocacy group PowerLines found that electricity prices have increased nearly 40% since 2021.

Electricity bills are set to rise even further as power providers respond to a record surge in demand. Utilities are planning $1.4  trillion in electric grid updates through 2030 largely to serve the proliferation of new AI data centers.

“Whoever wins these races will have the opportunity to preside over arguably the most critical four to six-year period facing the electricity system since, I would argue, its inception,” said Charles Hua, executive director of PowerLines.

Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are the only states nationwide with elected Democratic commissioners on their boards. Whether the party will make more inroads come November remains to be seen.

In addition to Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana and Alabama, utility board seats are elected in Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota. All but Mississippi will hold elections next month.

On the heels of victory

Frustration with Georgia’s utility panel has been building since at least 2023.

Republican commissioners greenlit six rate hikes in two years, largely to pay down two nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle, the most expensive infrastructure project in U.S. history at $35 billion. Households saw their power bills rise an average of $516 more per year between 2023 and 2025.

When a lawsuit delayed the PSC election to 2025, Democrats took advantage of the race being the only statewide contest on the ballot. With no competition for attention or resources, the party and its allies launched a highly coordinated campaign, raking in record funding and media attention to unseat two incumbent Republicans.

This year, commission candidates are competing for air time with Georgia’s tight gubernatorial race and a high-profile Senate contest. But the 2025 victory and salience of energy prices and data centers has elevated the fight — earning Hubbard and his fellow Democratic candidate Shelia Edwards a more prominent position on the ticket.

“I'm not at all intimating that somehow the PSC race is going to drive turnout,” said Mark McLaurin, Georgia state director for the national advocacy group Climate Power. “We're not driving the conversation, but this year we are absolutely on the bus.”

Voter anger also is driving Republican utility candidates to explain how they’ll protect customers from new rate hikes.

Josh Tolbert, a mechanical engineer, has highlighted his technical knowledge in his bid to replace Republican Tricia Pridemore on the Georgia panel. After a failed congressional run, Pridemore left the commission to work for a data center company.

Tolbert, who has embraced local control of siting data centers, has sought to put distance between himself and his fellow GOP candidate, Fitz Johnson, a former commissioner whose record includes voting to raise rates and expand the electric grid for data centers.

“I haven't campaigned with the other Republican candidate,” Tolbert said. “I'm not asking people to vote for a Republican. I'm asking people to vote for an engineer that knows about energy.”

Johnson lost to Hubbard by nearly 26 percentage points last year and is trying to win a seat back on the panel. He defended his work on the commission, saying Georgia has a reliable electric grid and affordable rates.

“Rates frozen and now decreasing because of solid Republican leadership on the Commission,” he said in an email.

Last year, the commission froze energy rates through 2028, but advocates worry Georgia Power’s $60 billion grid expansion for data centers — which the panel also approved last year — could eventually be recouped through ratepayers. Georgia has become one of the fastest growing markets for data centers in the country.

Republicans clap back

Georgia Democrats’ 2025 victory put Republicans in Alabama on high alert ahead of elections this fall, where two out of three seats on the state’s Public Service Commission are on the ballot.

In February, GOP lawmakers introduced a bill to shift utility commission elections to an appointment system. The idea was to protect Alabama from the "environmental extremists” that “captured” Georgia’s panel, said Republican Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger.

“The importance of preventing the same outcome from happening in Alabama became an urgency," he said.

But the bill failed to gain traction. In a statement announcing the proposal’s demise, Gudger pledged to find a new plan that did not repeal the right to vote for commissioners.

“Not a plan written in California, not a plan shaped in Beijing, but an Alabama plan built by Alabama's people for Alabama's people," he said.

Ultimately, Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed a law that Gov. Kay Ivey signed in April, which gives the governor more control over the regulatory panel.

The measure added four seats to the three-member board and created a governor-appointed secretary of energy with administrative authority over the commission. This summer, Ivey chose two commissioners recommended by Republican lawmakers and two by Democrats. Those four appointees will begin their terms in January, alongside whoever wins the two seats up for election in November.

When the appointed commissioners’ terms end, their positions — like the other three seats of the board — will become elected offices. All seven positions will eventually be elected by congressional district, as opposed to a statewide vote.

Sheila McNeil, a Democrat running against Republican former State Auditor Jim Zeigler for one of the open seats, filed a lawsuit challenging the new law as unconstitutional since it changed the structure of the panel after absentee voting began in March.

“They're expanding the fundamental structure of the Public Service Commission in the middle of an active election,” she said. “It violates voting rights, it violates due process and equal protection.”

Residents in Alabama have been fuming over some of the highest residential electricity rates in the Southeast. In May, voters expressed their frustration by rejecting the two Republican incumbent commissioners during the primary.

“The fact that one of the biggest bills that came out of the Alabama legislature this year was around restructuring the Public Service Commission speaks to the fact that these bodies just have so much more visibility and heightened influence at this current moment,” Hua with PowerLines said.

Republicans are also angling to retain power by leveraging the same voter anger over electricity bills and data centers that delivered Democrats a win in Georgia.

In Louisiana, two seats are up for election on the five-member Public Service Commission, in District 1 and District 5. Hilferty, the Republican running in District 1, has pledged to be a “watchdog” for utility customers, “not a rubber stamp.”

“Big tech is coming to Louisiana, but they won't be passing their electric bills on to you,” she wrote on social media.

Meta is developing a massive $50 billion AI data center in Louisiana. The Public Service Commission approved an initial set of three natural-gas plants for the campus and a proposal for seven additional plants is pending. The total gas capacity would be 7.5 gigawatts, enough to power New Orleans seven times over. Entergy estimated the seven gas plants would cost $12.9 billion.

One of Hilferty’s opponents, engineer and independent Chris Justin, said there’s “no meat behind” her promises to protect ratepayers from higher bills. He pointed to her campaign contributions: $40,000 of the $208,000 Hilferty raised during the last two-month reporting cycle came from companies regulated by the commission.

“Do you want an independent engineer not taking utility monies to make decisions about how much we pay for our utility bills, or do you want a career politician who has taken 45% of her latest finance report from utility companies,” said Justin.

Hilferty did not respond to requests for comment.

The Republican candidate running for the other open seat, John Atkins, is favored to win in ruby red District 5. The self-described “proud supporter of President Donald Trump” has also pledged not to accept contributions from utility interests.

With no viable path to pick up seats in Louisiana, the panel’s lone remaining Democrat, Davante Lewis, has been helping court donors to flip utility seats in Georgia and Arizona.

“I have been working with our party chair Ken Martin as well as the chair of the DNC Climate and Environmental Caucus Michelle [Deatrick] to connect Democratic donors to ensure that these races are supported,” he said.

Southwest slowdown

The Georgia playbook has given Arizona Democrats a roadmap to gain their first seats on the regulation board since 2020.

“There's beginning to be this kind of network of progressives around public utility commissions,” McLaurin with Climate Power said. “And the Georgia example provides inspiration for other races across the country.”

The two Democrats in Arizona’s race, Clara Pratte and NASA scientist Jonathon Hill, are pushing a platform of more renewable energy and tougher oversight of utility rate cases. Pratte, who works in clean energy on tribal lands, said recent rate hike requests mark “the biggest difference in this campaign” compared to past races.

Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility, is seeking a rate increase of 14 percent and Tucson Electric Power, the second-largest regulated utility, is seeking a 13% rate increase. The requests — set for a vote after the November elections — come on top of rate increases for each utility approved in recent years.

“The number one issue is affordability,” Pratte said. “Because of these insane rate increases, people are paying attention to the board that’s making these decisions.”

Pratte and Hill are facing incumbent Kevin Thompson and newcomer Ralph Heap. Even if the two Democrats win, they’d represent the minority on the five-member commission.

Unlike Louisiana Republicans, Thompson has pushed back on the Democrats’ messaging — saying rate increases are necessary for Arizona’s economic growth. Utilities, he said, are simply recouping capital they’ve already spent.

That’s why he and other Republicans favor stripping away mandates such as the state’s expired renewable goal or energy efficiency requirements, which he said cost ratepayers millions of dollars.

“Maybe in the end we’re talking about pennies in the grand scheme of things, but you cut 100 pennies and that’s a dollar,” Thompson said. “Our priority is to get utilities back in their lane to focus on their job, which is generating electricity and serving ratepayers.”

Heap’s involvement has also shaken up the race. The Freedom Caucus-backed state lawmaker and orthopedic surgeon upset incumbent Nick Myers in a primary. Heap charged that sitting Republicans had not reopened the coal-fired Cholla Power Plant, which shuttered in 2025 and is set to reopen to run on gas.

Heap’s primary campaign drew heavy support from conservative groups like Turning Point USA and drove a surge of interest in the primary. Now both the left and right say that affordability politics are bringing the down-ballot race into the spotlight.

It’s a trend that Hill, the Democratic NASA scientist, has seen firsthand.

“We’re going all over the state, even to red districts, and it’s been really easy to talk to Republicans and convince them to support us,” Hill said. “I may not change minds on any other race, but Arizonans agree that they need a change on this commission.”