By Seth McLaughlin (The Washington Times)
President Trump and his allies are going on the offensive in the public‑relations battle over data centers that have become a top target for voters angry about high prices.
Mr. Trump has been touting data centers as economic lifelines for struggling communities, arguing that places resisting new projects are killing a “golden goose” of local revenue and jobs and “want to end up being backwards and poor.”
Vice President J.D. Vance has taken a softer approach. He says the blowback stems from fears that data centers will drive up electricity costs — and that the best way to address that is to make it easier for them to generate power and “put power back into the grid as opposed to take it out.”
And former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich, who now leads the Innovation Council promoting the president’s artificial‑intelligence agenda, has laid out a roadmap for how the pro‑tech crowd can shift the conversation by framing projects as long‑term economic engines rather than short‑term strains.
Public sentiment will improve, they say, when voters are assured that data centers won’t drive up electric rates or drain local water supplies — and that the revenue they generate can help drive down property taxes.
“Sentiment that was built over years won’t change overnight,” Mr. Budowich told The Washington Times. “However, President Trump is right to not cede this fight, and he is delivering the right message: new data centers won’t drain our communities. They will power them.”
“Jobs, investment, and value are being created for everyone,” he said. “These data centers and the benefits they bring to hollowed-out communities are, in some ways, making good on President Trump’s pledge to the forgotten men and women of America.”
Mr. Trump has a tight window to shift public opinion on data centers, with the midterms less than two months away and little time left to influence how voters see the issue.
The political pressure is most intense in places where data‑center projects are already sparking local backlash — and nowhere is that clearer than Ohio.
The issue has become a political live wire in the U.S. Senate race, where former Sen. Sherrod Brown has made data centers a centerpiece of his campaign against Sen. Jon Husted, who advocated for them as the state’s lieutenant governor.
Mr. Brown has weaponized the issue as part of a broader economic message accusing Republicans of cutting sweetheart deals for corporations and saddling taxpayers with higher utility bills and few tangible benefits.
His latest ad features a man frustrated with a data center that was billed as a job creator and an economic boon for the rural area. “No one asked for that data center to be built here, and no one here is getting a damn thing from it. Except higher electric bills,” the man says. “Jon Husted is the reason this is here.”
The Husted campaign countered that Mr. Brown is a hypocrite.
“Thirty‑two years in Washington turned Sherrod Brown into a liar,” said Amy Natoce, Husted campaign spokesperson. “While Brown repeatedly failed hardworking Ohio families, Jon Husted is fighting to lower costs and help Ohioans keep more of what they earn.”
She highlighted Mr. Husted’s push for laws requiring data‑center companies to pay for the power they use and return excess electricity to the grid.
“Sherrod Brown had three decades in Congress to lead on this issue,” Ms. Natoce said. “Instead, he did nothing and is suddenly pretending to care in the middle of an election year.”
As the data center fight escalates on the campaign trails, polling suggests the voter backlash is real.
A Gallup survey released this year captured the mood: 7 in 10 Americans oppose building AI‑related data centers in their local area, nearly half “strongly” oppose it. That’s a dramatic reversal from the bipartisan enthusiasm that defined the industry’s expansion throughout the 2010s and early 2020s.
The shift in public opinion gave Democrats an opening — and Mr. Brown is leaning into it. “Ohioans are sounding the alarm about data centers, and I’m listening,” he said on social media. “They don’t want to see our utility bills spike, our water sucked up, or our farmland devoured.”
This article was made available to WMAL via The Washington Times.
