As electricity bills rise, candidates in both parties blame data centers

Last week, in their only televised debate, Spanberger and Earle-Sears only briefly touched on the topic of data centers. The Democrat said that they were coming to Virginia one way or another, and “many localities want to welcome them,” but vowed to make developers and users “pay their fair share.”

Earle-Sears sidestepped the question, suggesting that if Virginians saw higher bills, it was because of Democrats’ environmental policies. (The opposing party has controlled the state legislature for the last half of Youngkin’s term.)

“My opponent’s only plan is solar and wind,” said the GOP nominee. “Well, what happens when the sun goes down?”

In other campaigns, data centers are getting a firmer veto. The specter of freeloading corporations using more space, water, and energy for AI processing has defined the race for the 30th House of Delegates district, well outside DC. Republican incumbent Geary Higgins is running on his resistance to unchecked data center construction. Democratic challenger John McAuliff blames Republicans for it.

“We need to ensure that data centers aren’t built where they don’t belong,” Higgins says in one ad. In his own ad, McAuliff accuses Higgins of “selling out” to industry lobbyists, as the camera pans over a data center looming over a suburb: “Do you want more of these in your backyard?”

McAuliff’s campaign characterized Higgins’s support from the energy and tech sector as a reason why he couldn’t be trusted to block new construction. Higgins responded with a rundown of his long local record in opposing data centers.

They came up more than any other issue when he talked to voters, McAuliff said.

“We’re dealing with the biggest companies on the planet,” he said. “So we need to make sure Virginians are benefiting off of what they do here, not just paying for it.”

Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders and the founder of the progressive group More Perfect Union, said many Democrats were sleeping on an issue that has ignited grassroots activists. More Perfect Union has worked with data center opponents in multiple states, sharing similar stories of worry about energy costs and resource waste; Sanders has begun asking attendees of his “Fighting Oligarchy” meetings about AI and data centers, and has found little political support for them.

“For any Democrat who wants to think politically, what an opportunity,” Shakir said. “The people are way ahead of the politicians.”

Roem and other critics of data center growth see a few obvious goals in Virginia if Spanberger wins — though the would-be governor has not climbed on board with all of them. (The data center boom has been good for electrical workers, whose union endorsed Spanberger.)

She could close a loophole that allows tech companies to be taxed as bank clients. She could resurrect a law that got bipartisan support in Richmond, only to be blocked by Youngkin, that would require more assessments before data centers can be built.

But Elena Schlossberg, a co-founder of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, said that when she recently attended a Spanberger fundraiser to ask about data centers, it felt to her “like [the candidate] was figuring out a way to answer that question and not say a whole lot.”

Schlossberg said she intends to support Spanberger, seeing no change in the GOP gubernatorial ticket’s data center position. But in Gainesville, she showed up to the candidate forum to support Harders, the Republican — because he had the stronger stance against data centers.

She used a black Sharpie to scrawl “Democrats for” before his name on her campaign shirt.