‘They Are the Party of Data Centers’

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) has some major data center skeletons in his closet from his time as lieutenant governor of Ohio.

He knows it, his Democratic challenger — the longtime Ohio elected official Sherrod Brown — knows it, his colleagues in the Senate know it, voters back home are well aware (thanks to an ad blitz from Brown’s campaign in recent months). For the past several weeks, Husted has been trying to convince his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate to pass a piece of legislation that functions as little more than a press release to state utility regulators; I’ll get into that more below. The bill would, essentially encourage our nation’s Big Tech oligarchs to cover the cost of rising utility expenses tied to data centers and AI model training.

I wrote about the dramatic saga surrounding Husted’s legislative push as a remedy for his past fervent support for data center development in Ohio extensively here if you’d like to catch up. The TL;DR is that after years of championing new data center construction in the state as Ohio’s lieutenant governor, Husted is now calling for regulations to be placed on who foots the electric bill for data center-related spikes in energy prices in local communities. He is also joining Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine in supporting a pause on sales and tax breaks for tech companies that want to build new facilities in Ohio. (It’s not just Republicans and it’s not just Ohio; several other states and even blue cities are passing new regulations or have placed temporary moratoriums on data center construction in their areas.)

Husted’s long-shot bid to try to pass the bill, called the Ratepayer Protection Act, was blocked by Senate Democrats this afternoon. While Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) voted with Republicans today, it wasn’t enough to overcome the 60 vote filibuster in the upper chamber and Senate Dems were able to block it on a procedural vote, 57-43.

While the bill passed the House 417-3 earlier this month, Senate Democrats (besides the four who voted with Republicans) have been roundly criticizing the legislation as nothing more than a show pony for Husted to use during the waning days of his campaign to combat Brown’s relentless attacks.

Also, the bill is simply limp. It requires that state utility regulators consider implementing the new federal standards that direct Big Tech companies to cover the cost of rising electric bills and grid updates needed to run their data centers — within two years of the bill’s passage. Republicans like Husted have argued that the legislation would compel state utility regulators to act on the new federal standard. But even some Senate Republicans have joined Democrats in saying the bill is little more than a suggestion. Per MS NOW:

“Would I like to do more? Yeah,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said. “But on the other hand, is it better than nothing? Yeah.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., agreed that the bill doesn’t accomplish much, noting that most utilities are “managed through local and state decision making.” 

But he also agreed that it “probably would help” Husted in his re-election efforts.

My colleague Emine Yücel was up on the Hill this afternoon as senators headed in to vote on the legislation. She was able to catch up with Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Mark Warner (D-VA), who each slammed the measure and the GOP’s last-minute attempts to do clean up on its past position on accelerating nationwide AI development.

“Donald Trump is going to tweet 10 times between now and the election how much he loves data centers. Their position is clear. They are the party of data centers. They are the party of fealty to the AI industry and this fakery that they are putting on the floor right now isn’t going to fool anybody. So they’re desperate,” Murphy told reporters including TPM.

Murphy continued, going off on the Trump administration and President Trump personally for his role in encouraging the Big Tech oligarchy:

The data center conversation is a proxy for corruption. You know, people see that there is a deep integration between these big billion dollar tech companies and the Trump administration, and they don’t like it, and the proliferation of data centers is a sign to people that the only thing that matters in this administration is money and billionaire corporate power … Yes, sometimes this is about water use and land use, but it’s really a question of corruption and the data centers are an avatar for a corrupt relationship between the technology companies and the Trump administration. That’s why, that’s why the last bill they’re doing is an attempt to change two years of this corruption story. It’s going to laughably not work.

Warner put his opposition to the legislation quite frankly.

“The American public does not like data centers, capital data centers. They’re concerned about job dislocation, and they’re now concerned about safety,” he said. “And we are ignoring not just the CEOs, but frankly, you talk to the banks, you talk to corporate America … they need the safety assurance as well.”

— Nicole LaFond

Big Tech Skeletons

Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) was appointed to fill Vice President JD Vance’s vacant Senate seat after Vance became vice president. He is currently running in the November 2026 special election to serve out the remainder of Vance’s term and is fending off an aggressive challenge from longtime Ohio Democrat and former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

While Husted is a household name in Ohio thanks to his 25 year political career as a Republican in the state, there is one element of his legacy as lieutenant governor in Ohio — the position he held until Republican Gov. Mike DeWine hand-picked him for the Senate — that is not just coming back to bite him, but making Brown’s job incredibly easy: Husted’s past fervent support for new data center construction in the state.

As lieutenant governor, Husted was a stanch supporter of Ohio’s tax breaks for data center development, which were passed by Ohio lawmakers a decade ago to spur economic growth in the state. Ohio is currently home to at least 240 data centers — with one currently being constructed in Pike County that’s on track to be the world’s largest.

Ohio is one of several states that previously passed sales tax exemptions for the equipment needed to run data centers in order to help fuel the artificial intelligence boom. But that was before public outrage at the rampant development of new facilities for training AI models boiled over, among Americans of all political stripes, to become a dominating issue of the 2026 midterms. Husted was a major champion of new data center development in Ohio. He led ribbon-cutting ceremonies and issued press releases celebrating the construction of the new facilities in the state for years as a top official. Here’s one from February 2019, celebrating news that Google would construct a new $600 million data center in the state.

“Google investing in Ohio to open a new data center is great news for our state,” he said.

Republican Shapeshifting 2026

Uproar at how the data center boom is impacting water supply, air quality and affordable electricity in communities across the nation has only reached a fever pitch in the last year or so. Politicians, primarily Republicans, who previously championed both data center construction and unregulated AI advancement are now scrambling to change course as these issues become politically toxic.

I wrote about this last week, but Ohio is one of several states that once encouraged data center construction with tax breaks for Big Tech companies whose politicians are now looking for ways to pause or repeal those tax incentives in response to voter demands that elected officials do something — anything — to keep the burgeoning American tech oligarchy in check:

Husted is one of many Republicans trying to shape-shift on an issue they staunchly supported even months ago. While President Trump does all he can to make it impossible for members of the Republican Party to hold any position of nuance (You’re either 100% swallowing what Big Tech is shoving down our throats or you’re “backwards and poor”), Republican leadership in Congress has tried to create a middle-of-the-road policy position for vulnerable members and candidates this fall. It goes like this: Republicans are all for data center construction as an economic driver for rural and urban communities, but tech companies need to be footing the bill for rising electric costs.

It’s a messaging framework that Husted himself has adopted in recent weeks as he looks for ways to adjust to the public’s scorching outrage and his opponent’s relatively easy task of skewering him with related attack ads. In August, he told the local Ohio Statehouse News Bureau that he is in agreement with DeWine and Ohio state legislators’ push to, at the very least, place a pause on sales and tax breaks for tech companies constructing the new facilities in Ohio. He argued that big tech has done “a terrible job of talking about the value and virtue of” their technology.

“They’ve earned that backlash,” Husted said. “They haven’t been as forthcoming about the benefits that will come in terms of local jobs and construction worker jobs and reduced property taxes, and they haven’t offered things like paying the energy bills for local communities, for the power plants they build.”

Meanwhile, in Congress, Husted is using the last remaining days of the legislative session before the upper chamber goes on recess to try to convince his colleagues to take up a bill that he’s co-sponsoring that would force the tech companies behind data centers to cover the cost of utilities for their buildouts. The “Ratepayer Protection Act” would require state utility regulators to make sure that data centers and other big energy consumers cover the cost of any updates to the grid that need to take place to ensure their operations, among other things.

Politico has a new piece out today unpacking how this legislation is working its way through Congress and the work that Husted is doing to try to get his colleagues on board with quick passage in the Senate if it clears the House this week (tl;dr, it’s unlikely that Senate Democrats will jump to help a vulnerable Republican senator amid slam-dunk attack ads being lobbed at him by one of their former colleagues).