Data Center Watch reports $130 billion in projects delayed or cancelled in Q1 2026
After four months of teach-ins and canvassing in Monterey Park, just east of Los Angeles, Steven Kung helped the city become the first in the United States to permanently ban datacenter construction earlier this year. Now the community organizer is running for the Monterey Park city council, taking on an incumbent who supported the sprawling facility. “The datacenter coming to my neighborhood turned my life upside down,” Kung said. “I saw that there’s a dismantling of democracy at a local level.” His campaign mailers feature a red dragon dismantling a facility with its tail, imagery from his campaign.
The Working Families Party has signed up more than 50 candidates since it began recruiting in December, and the organization expects that number to “double or triple” for next year’s races, according to Ravi Mangla, the group’s national press secretary. Most applicants are first-time candidates who “felt moved to run because of what’s happening in their communities,” Mangla said. The vast majority are based in Michigan, Texas and Indiana, states with a high density of datacenters, with many more coming from swing states that could decide control of Congress.
Furor against AI-powered developments has continued to mount over the past year. Residents delayed or cancelled $130 billion worth of datacenter projects in the first three months of 2026 alone, according to research from Data Center Watch. A March Gallup poll found that seven in 10 Americans oppose datacenter construction close to where they live.
The Monterey Park campaign that Kung co-led mobilized a largely immigrant community through multilingual discussions, petition drives and door-knocking. No Data Center Monterey Park, the grassroots group he co-founded, secured a moratorium on new developments in six weeks and a permanent ban months later. “The datacenter fight has illustrated the power of the people to shape their environment,” Kung said.
The anti-datacenter movement has built coalitions between environmentalists and Nimbys, conservatives and democratic socialists. Amy Wong, co-founder of San Gabriel Valley Progressive Action, is running for city council in nearby Alhambra.
In Marana, Arizona, a community of about 60,000 on the outskirts of Tucson, residents sounded the alarm on the proposed datacenter’s water usage, noise pollution and potential impact on their electricity bills, in addition to what they described as a general lack of transparency from local government. Cybersecurity professional Jackie McGuire said she had not considered representing her hometown until late last year, when she learned of Beale Infrastructure’s plan to build a facility on 600 acres of farmland at a cost exceeding $120 billion. A clip of McGuire testifying against Beale Infrastructure at a public meeting went viral on Instagram in December, and her social media following surged.
McGuire ran for the Marana town council in July on a slate of anti-datacenter organizers after town officials rejected a datacenter referendum. She was the only member of her slate to win a seat, in part because she had greater name recognition. “I got into the race pretty last minute because we needed a majority on the town council,” she said. “Unfortunately, we were not able to secure that, but that doesn’t mean we’re dead in the water.” She said she would continue to push for a referendum requiring voter approval of datacenter projects.
Datacenter backlash was a deciding factor in an Oregon Senate primary election in July, when educator Myrna Muñoz upset incumbent Janeen Sollman. Sollman had backed a controversial bill that would have traded more farmland for industrial development. Muñoz, who campaigned against the facilities, said she had not realized how many were under development in Hillsboro — considered the birthplace of Oregon’s tech industry — until she launched her campaign in March. The city approved 17 new projects on top of more than 30 existing sites just before enacting a moratorium in late July.
“These 17 centers that got through have tax abatements until 2050,” Muñoz said. “They’re taking away money from my children and grandchildren.” Muñoz, with four other Oregon legislators, is backing a three-year statewide moratorium on new datacenters, along with additional regulations on existing projects. Muñoz is expected to prevail in the general election in a solid Democratic district.
Saul Levin, program director for the Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research, said the anti-datacenter movement has mobilized everyday people from farmers to teachers to beauty salon workers who are “irate about what’s going on” in their communities. “AI companies are spending the equivalent of the US military budget on software and datacenters,” Levin said. “Instead of building these facilities to house data about people, they could fund hospitals, schools.”
Datacenters have become a galvanizing issue in the midterms, Mangla said, because they embody “the unchecked growth of corporate greed while the prices of groceries and basic goods have surged.” The Working Families Party frames the fight as “an issue of working people against powerful oligarchs who want to override local concerns and draw resources from communities,” Mangla said, adding that it is “something we see mobilizing and animating people all around the country, especially in the midwest and south where the growth of datacenters is especially prevalent.”
Now campaigning ahead of the November election, Kung is turning his attention to related issues, including protecting immigrants from ICE and terminating Monterey Park’s contract with Flock cameras — AI-powered license plate readers that have sparked privacy concerns in local communities. “Our insurgent campaign speaks to what’s happening in the country at large,” Kung said. “We all see the need for change.”