Data center pushback emerges as central issue in Ohio, Michigan midterm races

Pataskala residents push charter amendment after council rejects 200-megawatt site

PATASKALA, Ohio — In the midterm campaign’s final weeks, front-lawn signs across this city of 18,500 have become a common sight. The most common one supports neither a candidate nor a party. It reads: VOTE YES TO BAN DATA CENTERS.

While pushback against data centers is well-known nationwide, battlegrounds across Ohio and Michigan might become a test case for a question swirling around the midterms: Will voters punish politicians over them? In the Midwest, where sprawling facilities are rising on farmland and former factory sites, the issue has become a — if not the — central political focus.

In Pataskala, east of Columbus, the City Council in August rejected a 200-megawatt data center following vocal opposition from residents. Opponents are now pushing for a charter amendment that would block such centers in the future.

Brandyn Bernard, 37, a longtime Pataskala resident and an executive chef for a healthcare company, helped push for the ban out of health, environmental and cost concerns. Bernard voted for President Trump three times and flew a MAGA flag from his home in 2024. “I asked for help from Republicans, and I got nothing,” Bernard said. Today, a sign supporting the ban stands on his lawn next to signs for two local Democratic candidates, and Bernard said he plans to vote for Democrats this fall.

Other local Republicans are sticking with their party even while opposing data centers. Michael Thurman, 72, a retired factory worker on a fixed income, said he dislikes the farmland loss and traffic and blames tech companies and both parties, but he still plans to vote for GOP candidates. Thurman worries about rising energy bills; if the increases continue, he said, “I probably will not be here in 10 years because of that.”

Polls reflect widespread voter angst. A September Bowling Green State University survey of 1,000 likely Ohio voters found that 70% view data centers as bad for the environment, 69% as bad for home-energy costs, and almost eight in 10 favor a temporary construction pause. A Michigan State University poll found more than two-thirds of Michigan respondents oppose local data centers. A national survey by The Wall Street Journal found 62% supported pausing development, with 39% calling it a top priority.

The issue runs through Ohio’s Senate race between Republican Sen. Jon Husted, 59, and Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown, 73. Recent polls show Brown, who has made reining in data-center development a core issue, leading Husted, who filled the seat in 2025 when then-Sen. JD Vance became vice president. Brown’s campaign has aired television ads calling Husted “the face of data centers” and has attacked him in speeches and billboards for supporting artificial-intelligence data-center expansion while he was lieutenant governor.

The Republican-led state government played a role in creating tax incentives to lure tech investment to Ohio, and leaders, including then-Lt. Gov. Husted, touted the effort. Some Democrats, including Brown, also supported early efforts to attract tech to the state, including data centers.

Ohio now has more than 200 data centers operating, under construction or planned across the state, with a large concentration along a stretch of Beech Road in New Albany, near Pataskala. A recent drive along Beech Road found data centers for miles along what only a few years ago was farmland. The multistory, windowless structures stretch football fields in length, whirring cooling fans atop the buildings run 24 hours a day, and construction cranes tower over cornfields while huge trucks rumble along the roads, creating potholes and traffic backups. On two-lane roads near the centers, “For Sale” signs are common. One homeowner posted a sign reading, “THANKS to all the companies building for the dust bowl & torn up road,” and next to it a plastic skeleton wearing a hard hat and giving the finger.

Republican strategists worry about voter backlash. In August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned in a memo that “data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” advising candidates to focus on utility costs instead. Husted subsequently backed the “Ratepayer Protection Act” to shift electricity costs to data centers. House Republicans passed it, but Senate Democrats blocked it as ineffective.

“I’m the only one fighting to make sure that the data centers pay their own costs,” Husted told the Journal while visiting a manufacturing facility outside Cleveland, before his bill stalled. Husted said he supported local control over data centers. Brown, speaking to the Journal at a union hall near Youngstown, said Husted’s bill was toothless. “Big out-of-state corporations and billionaires come to the state, get tax giveaways, don’t consult with anybody, and get help from John Husted in a big, big way,” Brown said. “He’s the point man, and they gobble up the farmland and gulp up all the water, and then they raise electric rates.”

Matt Dole, the GOP chairman for Licking County, which includes Pataskala, said the area was “ground zero in Ohio for data centers” and “the Wild West for development for a period of years.” Dole said government officials and tech executives are now moving to make companies shoulder more responsibility for electricity costs and water usage. “Over time, we will get past where this is supercontroversial,” he said.

Across the state line in Michigan’s hotly contested Seventh Congressional District, progressive Democrat and environmental activist William Lawrence is calling for a national moratorium on data-center construction in his bid to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Barrett, a former Army helicopter pilot. On a recent rainy Saturday, Lawrence knocked on doors in Mason, Mich., a semirural town where a proposed $1 billion data-center campus angered many residents. At a town hall in Charlotte, Lawrence responded to questions on several issues — healthcare, education and the environment — and included anti-AI or anti-data-center sentiment in his answers. The crowd of several dozen applauded. “I don’t know if there’s any issue that’s more important over the next 18 months,” Lawrence said.

A spokesman for Barrett said data centers have “become a circular conversation with Tom’s opponent and we are focusing on other issues.” Barrett has signaled a tough-on-AI stance during his campaign, including co-sponsoring a bill to limit nondisclosure agreements related to data-center projects. In one ad, he contrasts himself with politicians “cozying up with big tech billionaires to force data centers on our communities.”

Both Michigan Senate candidates, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, have called for a pause in further data-center construction.

In northeastern Ohio’s Trumbull County, Democratic Vice Chair Kathy DiCristofaro hopes frustration with proposed data centers will benefit her party. The county went for Trump in 2024 and against Brown in his failed re-election bid that year. DiCristofaro said 4,200 voters in her county registered either Republican or unaffiliated pulled ballots to vote this May in the Democratic primary; when she contacted those voters to ask why, a top answer was data centers. “The anger is coming out, so that’s why they’re voting,” she said. “Let’s face it, that’s a motivator.”

Many of the fights remain hyperlocal, having more to do with city councils than U.S. senators. But constituents are demanding action from federal and state candidates. With early voting expected to start in days, both parties are anxiously waiting to see how far data-center concerns will reach up the ballot.