Opposition to data-center projects in Ohio is reshaping the midterm election debate.
Patty Spillman and Jen Belt drive through the outskirts of Grove City, Ohio, mapping the battle lines of a war they have waged for months. Pointing out the window of Belt's blue Chrysler minivan, Spillman notes the precise borders of a proposed 310-acre data-center campus. She singles out the electrical substation and towering power lines, and recounts the personal histories of neighbors who received offers to sell their land to Headwaters Site Development, the Texas-based company proposing to build a cloud-computing storage facility on this patch of rural farmland about 10 miles outside Columbus. Between fields of drying cornstalks and short rows of soybeans, some farmers have planted "no data center" signs on their lawns.
Spillman's 165-year-old farm sits across the street from the proposed complex. A soft-spoken retired bus driver, Spillman, 63, is a Republican who has voted for President Donald Trump three times. Belt, a 51-year-old artist and marketing contractor, is a Democrat. For months, they have co-led a group called Protect Grove City, which mobilized a community effort to thwart the proposed data center. Residents' concerns are legion: water usage, noise and environmental impacts, energy costs, and the cloak of secrecy hanging over the project. "This is our community. What if we don't want you here?" says Spillman, whose mother-in-law turned down an above-market offer from Headwaters of around $1.5 million for 30 acres of land.
Community pushback prompted the Grove City council to pass a yearlong moratorium on data-center construction. In November, Grove City residents will vote on a proposal to go even further, making all large developments subject to voter approval. The issue has upended the intimate politics of this conservative community of 45,180. Community Facebook groups are filled with bickering, angry residents have filled council meetings, and activists have filed freedom-of-information requests seeking records of city officials' communications about the referendum. Grove City's longtime mayor, Richard "Ike" Stage, and other local leaders have fought these efforts, arguing that the ballot initiative to restrict development would hurt economic growth.
The fervor against data centers is spreading across the state. Ohio has some 200 data centers, making it one of the biggest hubs in the country. In a former swing state that went red in the Trump era, Republicans admit that the groundswell of opposition to data centers has created a political opening for Ohio Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.
"I'm as Republican as they get, but it's going to be a tough year for Republicans in the state of Ohio," says Nick Owens, a former county GOP chair and Trump delegate at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Owens is now working with the anti-data-center group Conserve Ohio. "I can get on my phone right now and text or call 10 or 12 people from 10 different corners of the state, from all different political backgrounds, from all different socioeconomic backgrounds," Owens says, "because we're all united about this."
A national Gallup poll published in May found that more than 70% of voters oppose building an AI data center in their area. In Ohio, where the average household's electric bill climbed some 15% in the past year and more than 66% over the past decade, sentiment is even more negative. A September survey by Bowling Green State University found that nearly 80% of Ohioans support a moratorium on data centers. More than 100 local governments in Ohio have reportedly enacted data-center moratoriums. In November, at least 10 will vote on adding a data-center ban to their charters, while two others will decide whether to recall mayors who cut data-center deals. In the eyes of opponents, the facilities, and the powerful AI industry that backs them, have come to represent a threat to their safety, jobs, pocketbooks, and quality of life.
It is not clear how potent the issue will be at the polls in November. By themselves, data centers do not rank as a top-tier national campaign issue for voters. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, the economy, the future of democracy, health care, education, and immigration made up the top five. But Democratic candidates have sought to connect data centers to many of those themes. They are promising to ease affordability concerns by cracking down on high electricity bills through data-center restrictions, pledging to strengthen democracy by fighting Silicon Valley's opaque deals to get facilities built, casting AI companies as puppet masters in an unequal economy, and portraying their political rivals as corrupt leaders seeking to curry favor with powerful companies. This election cycle, $137.6 million has been spent on broadcast ads about data centers, with Democrats accounting for 77% of that estimated spending, according to the analytics firm AdImpact.
Some Democrats believe data centers could be a decisive issue in tight races, especially in red states like Texas, Iowa, and Ohio. In those states and others, voters have told pollsters they trust Democrats more on the issue. Trump has positioned himself as one of the industry's biggest champions, deriding opponents of data centers as "backwards and poor." The wave of populist anger has "become the one thing that unites Americans right now," says Megan Mullin, a UCLA political-science professor. "They connect to bigger themes that are becoming really important in American politics: around affordability, around energy affordability, around suspicion and discomfort about AI, about populist resistance to the accumulation of wealth and tech titans."
In early October, Don Leonard, the Democratic candidate in Ohio's 15th Congressional District, arrives at the Schmidlapp Free School Library in Piqua. The space is decorated for fall with artificial flowers and filled with activists and community leaders ready to detail the latest data-center controversy.
Meta, which has been rapidly building out its data-center infrastructure to fuel its AI push, made plans to erect a $1 billion campus in the area. According to city documents and news reports, the company hashed out the deal in secret last year, using a private LLC and nondisclosure agreements with local officials. After Meta was revealed as the company behind the data center, the social media giant and Piqua government officials said the project would bring economic investment to the region. In a statement, Meta told TIME that the company is reviewing its use of nondisclosure agreements.
Leonard heard from Alisha Lange, 42, who worried about contamination of her well water. Lange, a registered Republican, was among those angered by the secrecy surrounding the project and by revelations that several city officials had received $3,000 bonuses from the city after winning Meta's business. In response, outraged residents successfully petitioned to add a measure to the November ballot to recall Piqua's mayor and other elected officials.
A former city and regional planning professor at The Ohio State University, Leonard, 48, has a stubbly beard and speaks with a deliberate unpretentiousness. Normally, a progressive candidate wouldn't stand much of a chance in a congressional district that has been represented by Republicans for the past 15 years. The incumbent, former coal-industry lobbyist Mike Carey, won by 13 points two years ago. But by the time Leonard won the primary in May, residents in the district, which includes Grove City, were aflame over data centers. Leonard pushed his team to add a data-center question to their polling, and they found that more than 70% of likely voters in the 15th District wanted greater say over where data centers are located and how they operate. "If we were going to message on it, we had to confirm quantitatively what we knew from listening to the constituents," Leonard explains in an interview at a modern co-working space in Columbus. "Which is that data centers are one of the most bipartisan issues in Central Ohio right now."
Leonard sees data centers as "the mascot for predatory capitalism," forcing communities to absorb higher electricity costs and environmental threats as their local landscapes are remade by huge companies based far away. He says the developments have exacerbated the anxieties of residents who watched neighbors lose solid factory jobs to outsourcing and suspect they will once again be the losers in an AI-driven economy. "There's a feeling like we didn't even govern the last revolution, globalization, and now they're hoisting another one on us," Leonard says. "They're doing it in our backyard. They're attacking our way of life."
It's not clear whether the backlash will be enough to catapult Leonard into contention in a solid