U.S. President Donald Trump in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
With the 2026 midterms' general election less than four months away, Democrats are worried that the Graham Platner scandal in Maine will hurt their chances of flipping the U.S. Senate. But Democratic strategists are still feeling good about their chances of winning back the U.S. House of Representatives. And according to Bloomberg News and the Daily Beast, some MAGA candidates are willing to buck President Donald Trump when it comes to data centers — an issue they fear could work against them in November.
"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," reporter Ewan Palmer explains in the Daily Beast, "nearly half of all candidates who have run anti-data center campaigns since December have been Republicans."
Bloomberg News found that at least 12 GOP candidates — some of them gubernatorial hopefuls, others running for seats in Congress — have aired ads against data centers.
Bloomberg's Emily Birnbaum reports, "Progressive lawmakers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders led the first wave of opposition to data centers. Now, Republican candidates around the U.S. are seizing on the fervor even as President Donald Trump actively courts tech titans and promotes the rapid, streamlined expansion of the energy-hungry facilities. The divide within the GOP months before the crucial midterm elections comes as the $725 billion data center rush helps drive up utility bills as much as 267 percent and otherwise upends American life."
Birnbaum adds, "Less than a third of Americans approve of the fast pace of construction and most would oppose building a data center in their own community, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in June."
Since December 2025, according to Birnbaum, "25 federal and gubernatorial candidates" have "run ads either promoting their own opposition to data centers or slamming their opponent for supporting these complexes, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of campaign ads across streaming, television, Facebook and Google. Twelve — nearly half — are Republicans."
One of those Republicans is Chuck Gray, who is running for the House via Wyoming.
In an ad, Gray vows, "In Congress, I'll stop data centers. If Silicon Valley wants to build their liberal empire, they can do it somewhere else."
Clifford Young, chairman of Ipsos Public Affairs and Strategic Insights, stresses that opposition to data centers is bipartisan.
Young told Bloomberg News, "We're seeing this play out on both sides, 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…. Data centers are like a bogeyman. They represent, in people's minds, an unfettered elite that does whatever it wants and rigs the system to their benefit."