WASHINGTON — With House primaries now finished across all 435 districts and the general election six weeks away, an unlikely issue has emerged as a favorite target for campaign ad-makers in both parties: the AI data center going up down the road.
Since January, campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $45 million on political ads mentioning data centers in gubernatorial, House and Senate races, according to an analysis of advertising-tracking data. The spending splits almost evenly by party — Republicans have put in roughly $22 million, Democrats just over $21 million — but Democrats have run nearly twice as many distinct ads, 127 to 67, spreading the message across more contested states.
The Same Argument, From Both Sides
What makes the trend notable is not the volume of spending but its uniformity: campaigns from both parties are making nearly identical arguments, casting sprawling AI server farms as expensive to the public in ways that cross ideological lines — driving up household electricity bills, straining local water supplies and receiving tax breaks that critics on the left and right both call excessive. One Republican operative, describing the shift in his own party's messaging, put the emerging consensus plainly: "We could potentially have data centers as long as they pay for their own energy."
The Georgia governor's race has drawn the heaviest spending on the issue, with $12.8 million behind nine ads, several of them targeting Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. In Ohio, groups backing Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown have cast Republican Sen. Jon Husted as "the face of data centers," accusing him of granting "$2.5 billion in out of control tax breaks," while in Florida, Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds has positioned himself as a check on the industry, promising to shield residents from utility-rate increases tied to new facilities.
A Rare Point of Public Agreement
Polling suggests the ad blitz reflects a genuine and fast-moving shift in public sentiment. A Reuters/Ipsos survey found 77 percent of Americans are concerned that data centers are pushing up their electricity costs, with roughly two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republicans saying they would oppose a new facility being built in their own community — a rare instance in a polarized electorate of an economic issue that cuts across party lines rather than along them.
Strategists in both parties say the issue is likely to keep growing as more campaigns discover it tests well with focus groups, particularly in swing districts near new or proposed AI infrastructure projects. With control of both chambers of Congress at stake in November, operatives on both sides expect data centers to remain a fixture of the campaign's final stretch, even as the two parties otherwise offer starkly different visions of how — or whether — to regulate the industry once votes are counted.
