The AI Industry Lost Its Political Home

The Republican Party's Senate campaign arm has a private name for the AI data center industry, and it is not a compliment. In a leaked memo, the National Republican Senatorial Committee calls the industry "a toxic brand" and "the anchor hanging around Husted's neck" in the Ohio Senate race ^[1]. The memo's warning is blunt: if Jon Husted loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice. That is the inversion made concrete. The party that spent two years championing unfettered buildout now treats the industry as electoral poison. The reason is not abstract. Electric bills have risen 30% nationally over five years, and near the largest data centers the increase has reached 267% ^[2]. Elizabeth Warren has turned that number into a campaign weapon. Opposition to a data center in one's own neighborhood climbed from 28% to 41% in a single year ^[3]. Public First, the firm that tracks the figure, says it is rare to see political attitudes change this fast. Governors of both parties have moved. Greg Abbott halted roughly 1,800 Texas projects and told the developers what he thought of their approach.

If you're a data center and you want to operate in Texas, you have to first get the approval of those in local communities. — Greg Abbott

Josh Shapiro signed an executive order requiring developers to fund their own power and win local approval. Kathy Hochul enacted a one-year ban. J.B. Pritzker halted tax exemptions ^[4]. The result is not a clean fight between two sides. It is a three-way split, and the president stands on one side of it alone. Trump has designated data centers critical national security infrastructure, and his Energy Secretary Alfie Moon has vowed to "roll over the opposition" ^[5][2]. On the second side are the governors, from both parties, who have stopped asking and started restricting. On the third side is a populist coalition that wants the whole thing paused. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced a federal moratorium act ^[6]. In deep-red Missouri, sixteen Republican legislators are pushing a "People Before Powerful Interests Act" that would require voter approval for subsidized projects ^[7]. In North Dakota, Democrats are using data center skepticism to court far-right rural voters ^[8]. None of this means the industry is without friends or arguments. Loudoun County, Virginia, collects roughly $875 million a year from its 200 data centers, and Pennsylvania officials have toured the county to study the model ^[9]. North Dakota's cost-causation approach shows a state can host data centers while protecting ratepayers ^[10]. But the political calculus has inverted anyway. The industry's own spending now works against it: a pro-AI super PAC's $5 million pledge to Florida Republican Byron Donalds sparked a voter backlash ^[11]. The NRSC memo already contains the meaning of this moment. The industry has not lost on technical or economic grounds. It lost its political home, and the party that was its champion is now the one most afraid of it. If Husted loses in Ohio and data centers take the blame, the memo warns, no politician will go near the next one. That is not a prediction about electricity. It is a prediction about who will be willing to stand next to the industry at all.