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WHEN DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES and ad makers began mapping out their midterm campaign strategies last year, they went looking for a villain beyond Donald Trump—a bogeyman who could motivate voters.
Elon Musk played the role for a while. Then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took center stage in the midterm messaging. Other operatives have floated making JD Vance or Trump family members the bête noire.
But as the midterms near, it turns out it’s not a person who Democrats are villainizing, but a place. Or, rather, the concept of them.
Data centers are the Democratic party’s en vogue bad guy, increasingly demonized by candidates running in competitive races, along with the corporations racing to build them around the country.
A sampling:
Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown released two ads last month alone going after data centers for raising utility bills and attacking his Republican opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, for seeking to bring data centers to the state.
In the northeast corner of Pennsylvania, Paige Cognetti, who is hoping to unseat first-term Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, released a campaign ad slamming data center developers.
James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, held a news conference two weeks ago calling for tighter regulations on data centers.
And in Florida, David Jolly, the former Republican member of Congress running for governor as a Democrat, made waves when he called for a moratorium on the construction of data centers.
These are just a few examples of what has become a major talking point for Democratic candidates across much of the country.
“Voters were already looking for a fight over high utility bills, and then data centers walked in the door and gave voters a target to take out that anger on,” said Zac McCrary, a Democratic pollster. (McCrary’s clients include Tennessee state legislator Justin Pearson, another candidate who has made data centers a focal point of a congressional campaign.)
There are several reasons Democratic campaign officials believe data centers are a potent political issue. First,
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