数据中心争议进入美国地方选举：DCK 统计 18 名现任官员落选

At least 18 incumbent officeholders lost elections between August 2025 and August 2026 after taking documented action on a data center project or becoming associated with a political fight over its development, according to a Data Center Knowledge review of election results, government records, campaign materials, and local reporting.

The cases are not equally conclusive. In some, defeated officials directly attributed their losses to data center votes. In others, challengers made data centers a prominent campaign issue alongside electricity costs, taxes, land use or local control.

Data Center Knowledge counted an incumbent officeholder only when the official lost a completed election after a documented vote, approval, incentive, zoning action or public advocacy connected to a data center project or policy controversy. The review does not treat timing alone as proof that the issue determined the result.

The count includes one officeholder, Bridget McCandless in Missouri, who sought the mayor’s office while serving as an incumbent council member. It is a count of documented losses, not a measurement of how often data center involvement causes an incumbent to lose.

The officials themselves have generally been reluctant to publicly attribute their defeats to data centers. Their opponents have been considerably less reluctant to make the connection.

Utah

Utah produced the clearest examples. State Senate President J. Stuart Adams lost his Republican primary in June to Stephanie Hollist after becoming closely associated with the proposed Stratos data center project in Box Elder County.

Two Box Elder County commissioners, Lee Perry and Boyd Bingham, also lost their Republican primaries after voting to advance the project.

The proposed Stratos project has drawn opposition over potential water and environmental impacts. The commissioners voted to allow the state’s Military Installation Development Authority to create the Stratos project area, giving the state authority to override county zoning and land-use regulations.

Hollist made opposition to Stratos a central campaign issue.

Perry was unusually direct about the political consequences after his defeat.

“Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,” Perry told The Salt Lake Tribune after conceding his primary race.

Adams, who chairs the MIDA board, also faced pressure over the project and moved late in the campaign to soften his position on its proposed footprint.

The Utah cases provide the clearest evidence in the review that data center politics can reach beyond local zoning fights and threaten senior state officials.

Missouri

Missouri produced another cluster – and one of the most revealing cases. In Festus, four incumbent city council members – Jimmy Collier, Brian Wehner, Bobby Venz, and Jim Tinnin – lost their elections after a fight over a proposed $6 billion data center project.

Collier, Venz, and Tinnin voted for the development agreement, while Wehner voted against it. All four lost.

That makes it difficult to characterize the backlash as nothing more than punishment for voting yes. The controversy also involved the city’s development process, transparency and the way the agreement was approved.

In Independence, council members Jared Fears and Bridget McCandless also lost elections amid a fight over a proposed data center and associated tax incentives.

Fears later said the project was a factor in his defeat.

The Missouri cases show that the political exposure can come from the project itself, the approval process or an official’s association with a broader development fight.

Campaign Attacks

The pattern extends beyond Missouri and Utah. In North Carolina, David Batts defeated four-term Edgecombe County Commissioner Donald Boswell after campaigning explicitly against the proposed Kingsboro data center. Batts had warned commissioners that residents would “primary” them over the project.

His campaign signs said: “Vote no for data centers.”

In Virginia, meanwhile, Democrat John McAuliff branded Republican Del. Geary Higgins “Data Center Geary” and made data centers a major attack line in his successful challenge.

Maryland offered a different version of the backlash: officials who had opposed a pause on new data center development still became targets of candidates who argued the county had mishandled growth.

Calvert County commissioners Todd Ireland, Mark Cox Sr. and Earl “Buddy” Hance lost their Republican primaries after challengers criticized their opposition to a proposed pause on new data center development and the county’s broader handling of growth.

Frederick County Council President Brad Young also lost his Democratic primary after the council approved a zoning expansion that opened more than 2,600 acres to data center development.

Oregon state Sen. Janeen Sollman lost her Democratic primary in a race that included opposition to data center development in the Hillsboro area. Labor and education issues also played major roles, making the data center connection less direct.

Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols lost his reelection bid in a race dominated by electricity rates and Georgia Power. Data centers were part of the broader debate over who should pay for new generation and grid infrastructure, but the evidence connecting the issue directly to his defeat is weaker.

The cases differ in their evidentiary strength. But together they show a change in political incentives: candidates now see data centers as shorthand for broader complaints about power costs, tax policy, land use and local control.

Industry Response

Mike Casey, president of Tigercomm, an energy tech PR firm, said the industry has underestimated the need to campaign for projects.

“Most tech companies weren’t built to campaign for what they need to build,” Casey told Data Center Knowledge. “But winning a community’s permission to build in its midst is the opposite. It’s one county at a time, it’s heavily retail, and it’s person-driven.”

Casey said developers accustomed to rapid permitting are now operating in a “high-friction permitting environment” and are trying to build community-engagement operations after encountering widespread opposition.

“Too many developers are trying to bulldoze projects through instead of skillfully campaigning for them,” he said.

The result, he said, is “a community relations problem metastasizing into a widespread political crisis.”

The Data Center Coalition’s response has focused more on explaining the industry’s economic contribution.

Dan Diorio, the coalition’s executive vice president of state policy and government affairs, said in an email to Data Center Knowledge that the industry understands the need for “continued efforts to better explain the role of data centers to the public through community engagement and stakeholder education.”

Diorio cited a PwC report estimating that the industry supported 5.5 million jobs, contributed $927 billion to US GDP, and generated $204 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2024.

He also said data centers are committed to paying for the energy they consume and being responsible partners in the communities where they operate.

Jeff Thramann, founder and CEO of LT350, a company developing distributed data center infrastructure, argues that communication alone will not resolve the backlash.

“I think fundamental change is required because the impact of huge data centers on a single community is real,” Thramann said.

His prescription is to distribute computing capacity across smaller facilities rather than concentrate hundreds of megawatts at individual sites.

“If 300 MWs of capacity is needed in one location, the impact on that geography compared to spreading 1 MW across 300 grid circuits is incredibly different,” he said.

Thramann said the public distinguishes between a massive centralized campus and smaller computing facilities that have little visible effect on a community.

“A data center can range from an enormous, centralized facility to a closet in an office,” he said. “The public does not care about the closet because it changes nothing in a community, but they do care about the giant facility that changes an entire community.”

State Policy

Data centers are also appearing in paid campaign advertising well beyond the local governments that approve projects.

Campaigns in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Texas and Michigan have attacked candidates or elected officials over data center development, electricity costs, tax incentives or ties to developers.

Those races are separate from the 18 completed losses. They show that campaigns increasingly view data centers as a viable attack vector, but they do not establish an electoral penalty.

State leaders are also adjusting policy as concerns about power costs, permitting, incentives, and local opposition intensify.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, once a strong promoter of data center investment, is pushing to slow new projects and prevent their costs from being shifted to other customers. He said in August that data center companies had “basically dug their own grave” by failing to win community support.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has added environmental and transparency requirements for data center development, while Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has paused new data center tax-exemption requests.

The moves do not necessarily amount to opposition to data center development. They impose different conditions on its expansion – around electricity, water, permitting, transparency and incentives.

The Political Cost

The 18 races do not prove that data centers caused 18 defeats. They show that data center development has become a political vulnerability that candidates can exploit.

In the strongest cases, officials took documented actions on projects, challengers made those actions campaign issues, and the incumbents lost. In weaker cases, data centers became one issue in broader fights over electricity, taxes, development and local control.

The political bargain around data centers is changing. Developers still offer investment, jobs, and tax revenue, but communities are increasingly asking who pays for the electricity, who bears the effects on water and land, whether tax incentives are justified and how much say residents have before a project is approved.

Those questions are now following data center projects into elections.

And once an opponent can turn a permitting fight into a campaign issue, the project has acquired a political cost that can outlast the public hearing.