POWER GRAB

MAGA Candidates Break With Trump as Polls Flash Warning

The president has supported building huge data centers to aide the AI boom in the U.S.

Some MAGA candidates are going against Donald Trump and campaigning against data centers, believing it will help boost their midterm chances.

Analysis from Bloomberg News found that at least 12 Republican federal and gubernatorial candidates have run ads opposing energy-intensive data centers amid the AI boom ahead of November’s elections.

While opposition to data centers is more commonly associated with progressive lawmakers such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, nearly half of all candidates who have run anti-data center campaigns since December have been Republicans

It arrives at a time when Americans are becoming more wary of data centers. Last month, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found 77 percent of U.S. adults worry AI-driven data centers will raise electricity costs. More than half (57 percent) also said they would oppose a data center being built in their community.

“We’re seeing this play out on both sides,” Clifford Young, chair of Ipsos Public Affairs and Strategic Insights, told Bloomberg.

“Americans believe the system is broken. Republicans tend to be more anti-establishment today than Democrats, so this is an easy softball in this electoral cycle.”

Trump has shown huge support for the construction of mammoth data centers across the U.S. while championing AI giants such as Sam Altman’s OpenAI as part of the president’s hopes to boost U.S. manufacturing.

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However, even some MAGA figures have recognized there is growing voter backlash over the vast amounts of land and energy these facilities require, as well as concerns that they could further drive up energy bills.

“In Congress, I’ll stop data centers,” said Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, whom Trump endorsed in 2022, in a campaign ad as he seeks the state’s sole House seat.

“If Silicon Valley wants to build their liberal empire, they can do it somewhere else. Not here. Not now. Not ever.”

Elsewhere, Wisconsin Rep. Tom Tiffany appeared in an ad standing next to a cow, pledging to stop “big data from bulldozing our farmland” as part of his campaign to be the state’s governor.

On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech in Milwaukee to show support for Tiffany and other Wisconsin Republicans, such as Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

With Republicans facing the prospect of a difficult midterm election, Young believes some GOP candidates see opposing data centers as a way to gain a much-needed political boost.

“Data centers are like a bogeyman,” Young told Bloomberg News. “They represent, in people’s minds, an unfettered elite that does whatever it wants and rigs the system to their benefit.”

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