Local Data Center Fights Are Fueling A Wider Backlash

Local victories against data center projects are emboldening activists to take their fight to state lawmakers and launch a broader fight over data center expansion.

Conserve Ohio, a political action committee that helped pass 10 ballot initiatives to ban large-scale data centers in local Ohio communities, is aiming to use those successes to push the state Legislature to pass a 12-month moratorium on all data center related activity.

Ohio led the nation in local ballot measures related to data center construction, giving activists there an unusually broad set of victories to build on.

The effort is a preview of how the widespread success of local ballot measures to limit data center construction this election cycle is setting the foundation for a broader movement. The breadth of the pushback stood out given President Donald Trump’s largely unbridled support for data center construction to power the nation’s artificial intelligence industry.

“Because they won in such overwhelming ways and really ran the table, I think that only emboldens the people who are behind this and puts the data center industry on their back feet,” Doug Calidas, senior vice president of government affairs at Americans for Responsible Innovation, a nonprofit that advocates for state and federal AI rules, told POLITICO.

California’s results suggest Ohio’s data center fights could echo elsewhere. Alhambra Mayor Adele Andrade-Stadler told POLITICO that her city’s 82% vote to prohibit data centers could spur nearby communities to follow suit.

“It’s the election year for it,” she said, predicting other cities and towns could vote on similar measures. “We may see them in two years.” Alhambra’s campaign drew inspiration from neighboring Monterey Park, the first U.S. city where residents voted for a permanent data center ban.

The grassroots resistance is growing across red and blue states, putting pressure on lawmakers to respond and force the data center industry to defend its expansion plans.

On Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly voted to ban, pause or limit data center construction in their communities across the board in states like Ohio, Kansas, Maine and Florida, adding to the over 400 existing moratoriums and bans.

Austin Baurichter, a co-founder of Conserve Ohio, told POLITICO that a 12-month moratorium on any data center planning or activity in Ohio is the “starting point.”

“Anything less than that is not sufficient from our perspective,” he said.

In Ohio, 11 communities passed initiatives banning large-scale data centers: Conneaut, Defiance, Granville, Hubbard, Oregon, Pataskala, Piqua, Sunbury, Trenton, Upper Sandusky and Urbana.

While a statewide petition to ban data centers over 25 megawatts, led by Conserve Ohio, failed to make the ballot, all 10 Ohio cities that Conserve Ohio helped to draft charter amendments to ban large-scale data centers passed the measures by double-digit margins.

Calidas saw the success of these ballot initiatives as “some of the more significant results of the election.”

“The ballot initiatives, along with some of the governor elections, are really going to change the landscape here,” he added.

Democrats winning big in Texas set the stage for more widespread resistance to data centers in the state. Now, the fate of over 170 planned data centers in the state is in the hands of Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa, who previously called for an “immediate moratorium” on data center construction in the state, and said Texans must have a “seat at the table” in deciding if and how they are built.

Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, told POLITICO that it will be interesting to see whether Republicans — who hold a majority in the Texas Senate — work with Hinojosa on a data center moratorium, adding that their actions will serve as a bellwether for how legislators more broadly respond to the growing data center backlash.

“If they're listening to their own voters, they will,” Steinhauser said. “I think they can't afford to be seen as doing the bidding of Elon Musk and Big Tech.”

The local and statewide pushback is forcing data center companies and the policymakers who backed their expansion to reckon with what happens to projects already covered by contracts. In Ashville, Ohio, voters overwhelmingly passed a referendum to reject a data center development agreement between the city and developer EdgeConneX. However, the company already had its construction permits and has begun work, and EdgeConneX said Tuesday’s election outcome won’t stop the project from moving forward.

The data center project and a natural gas-fired power plant that’s planned onsite are hugely unpopular with Ashville area residents, who organized against it citing concerns about emissions, water use, noise and the project’s proximity to homes and several schools.

Ashville Mayor Roger Clark didn’t respond to a request for comment about the referendum vote.

“It complicates things enormously,” Dan Diorio, executive vice president of state policy and government affairs at the Data Center Coalition, told POLITICO. “When things are retroactive, when millions of dollars have been invested, crews have been retained. … Now there's significant uncertainty.”

But organizers of data center pushback, including Conserve Ohio, are betting that opposition is poised to increase and will likely develop into an even more salient issue for voters come 2028.

“Candidates that want to marshal popular support, particularly among the Democratic base, have every incentive to just go hard against data centers,” Calidas said.

Christine Mui contributed to this report.