Data centers are animating Ohio politics
Last December, we interviewed a former Republican state lawmaker who described unprecedented local voter anger over data centers ahead of the 2026 election.
That prediction is now hitting the mark: The AI industry’s buildout of data centers has become the animating force of Ohio politics.
Subjective? Sure. But consider the intense political magnetism of the issue and the way it’s driving candidates, or the phenomenon of local residents of all political stripes digging their heels in at once-unnoticed public hearings in fruitless fights to thwart the developers.
Just think through all these stories unfurling at the same time.
Republicans think data centers are killing Husted’s chances
Don’t just take it from us. Take it from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans. The group issued an extraordinary memo to AI companies this week that describes the situation facing Republican Sen. Jon Husted in dire terms.
“More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” states the memo, which was first reported by Axios and independently obtained by Signal Statewide.
Husted’s Democratic opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, began attacking Husted over the issue in July after overcoming the initial reluctance he and other Democrats had due to the support the facilities have from unions that represent construction workers. Republicans have tried to respond, including by pointing out that Brown lent his support to a data center project in the Columbus area in 2015, while Husted backed legislation in July requiring the facilities to pay for their own electricity.
The Republicans still think, at least per the memo, that Brown found his ace in the hole.
The memo says data center developers need to quickly fix their “toxic brand” and says politicians can’t do it alone. That seems to call on the tech industry – whose companies are among the biggest on the planet, led by the world’s richest men – to start putting up cash. They’ve got plenty to spend. Just one AI-affiliated political action committee, Leading the Future, has raised $75 million to spend on federal elections this year.
The NRSC memo describes the race as a “dead heat,” although two recent Fox News polls have shown Brown with an 8-point lead.
The memo closes with an ominous warning to the data center industry.
“If Husted loses because of data centers, the industry will be blamed, and elected officials or other parties will learn a cautionary lesson,” it says.
Husted isn’t the only Republican trying to recalibrate on data centers. Governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who repeatedly described the data center boom as “a good thing” in 2025, held a private town hall meeting on the subject last weekend. The event came on the heels of Ramaswamy announcing a data center plan that he’s promised will provide residents with free electricity, among other components.
“Vivek took the hard questions, took it on a chin a few times, but he listened,” read a later write-up from the Ohio Register, a conservative news website. “That’s why he’s doing these town halls. He even stated his perspective has changed quite a bit since Spring 2025.”
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Once-sleepy public hearings have heated up
Jake on Monday night attended a standing-room-only public hearing in Millersport, by Buckeye Lake, with a familiar scene: citizens sounding off about how they don’t want a data center built in town, mixed with a fatalistic sense that the development is all but preordained.
And that fight is about a new chapter – the natural gas-fired power plants that Big Tech is increasingly turning to in order to fuel data centers without driving up electric costs. Read Jake’s story here.
Another meeting is scheduled for Wednesday in Ashville, south of Columbus, home of a live legal effort at the Ohio Supreme Court to force, in some ways, an up or down ballot vote on a data center there.
Three sources of ours on polar opposite sides of the political spectrum – from the left, Cathy Cowan Becker, an environmental advocate with Save Ohio Parks, and from the right, Marcell Strbich, an “election integrity” advocate, and Stephanie Stock, a longtime anti-vaccine lobbyist – all said in advance to expect a lively event.
If those three agree, then something remarkable is happening in U.S. politics.
Unions are diving into the fray
Labor scrambles the traditional political calculus on the issue. Most unions have a long history of supporting Democrats. At the same time, their membership is increasingly leaning Republican. And they’re the workforce that literally builds the data centers.
In Millersport on Monday, heads of the unions representing electrical workers, operating engineers, plumbers, carpenters and other workers planted a flag in the ground in an unmissable way: data centers, they said, mean good jobs for unions.
That said, the union men all came in from Columbus. This drew groans from the locals, who depicted the union laborers as outsiders who won’t have to breathe in the fumes of a new natural gas plant.
The world’s biggest data center: Find It Here
None of this is going away anytime soon. Down in southern Ohio, OpenAI, a leader in the sector, just confirmed it’s the entity building what it’s calling the biggest data center in America.
That would be powered by what would be one of the biggest natural gas-fired power plants in the country, to be built in Piketon, Ohio.
DeWine snubs Google
Lastly, we generally tune it out when Gov. Mike DeWine does things like go on a “Heart of Opportunity” tour to tout a CNBC article that says Ohio is the top business state in the nation.
But Jake couldn’t help but notice a missing name in Lima. DeWine invited representatives from Procter & Gamble, which just built a new manufacturing center there, and the Lima Pallet Co.
Missing from the list? Google, which is currently building a $500 million data center there that has infuriated the locals. You can read Jake’s feature on that one here.
Political ad corner
We’ve been helplessly sitting back and letting all the political ads wash over our TV screens and social media feeds. As things are picking up in all corners, here are a couple that caught our attention this week:
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat, launched an ad this week that attacks her Republican opponent, former state lawmaker Derek Merrin, describing him as voting for a measure that delivered more than $2 billion in tax breaks to large data center operators. (The ad cites Merrin’s vote for the 2017 state budget bill, which, among dozens of other provisions, actually expanded Ohio’s existing data center tax break by slightly relaxing the investment requirements data center companies needed to make in order to qualify for it.)
The ad also references Merrin’s vote for House Bill 6, the 2019 energy law at the heart of a federal corruption probe, making Kaptur the latest in a long line of Democrats who have tried, mostly without success, to politically exploit the issue. But it takes a slightly different approach by connecting both data centers and HB 6 to rising electricity costs.
Sen. Jon Husted has released an attack ad of his own. It describes Brown as “Senator” Sherrod Brown. “He’s been there [in Washington] for 32 years,” it says. To someone who isn’t a political super fan, the wording might leave the impression that Brown, not Husted, is the incumbent – which Andrew has found to be a common misconception – and worthy of blame for anyone looking to make a change in their elected representation.
🗳️ Looking for clear, nonpartisan election info? See what to know about Ohio’s November 2026 election and how it could affect your community.
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