AI as an issue in hotly contested House race

Brian Lehrer (0:05)

From WNYC, I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my Daily Politics Podcast. It's Wednesday, October 7th.

It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. So we are in our 30 issues and 30 days election series. Let other media focus only on the polls and personalities. We are choosing an issue a day for 30 straight shows to help you be as informed a voter as you can be in our local swing congressional districts and the New York state governor's race. For the first three days of this week, we're highlighting three issues in the local congressional race, getting the most national attention. It's the Mike Lawler, Cait Conley race in District 17, north of the city. Mike Lawler is the Republican incumbent. Cait Conley is Democratic challenger. On Monday, we looked at how affordability is an issue in that race, and how it came up in their debate last week on News 12 Yesterday, we dug into how the candidates are aligning themselves or not aligning themselves, as may be the case with what you might call the more controversial wings of their respective parties or more controversial individuals. Today, we're going to talk about another big issue in the race, AI and data centers. Both of the candidates have put out videos recently on this. To set this up, we will listen to those. Here's the first one. This is from Lawler.

It goes back a few weeks. It's an actual attack ad against Cait Conley, the Democratic challenger. We will hear this first.

Cait Conley (1:48)

We need data centers.

SPEAKER_3 (1:49)

Cait Conley has hundreds of thousands of reasons why she wants to build data centers in the Hudson Valley.

Cait Conley (1:57)

We need data centers.

SPEAKER_3 (1:58)

Conley took a massive six-figure payday from the AI companies she steered contracts to when she worked for Biden. No wonder Cait Conley wants them.

Cait Conley (2:09)

We need data centers. We're not going to get rid of them.

Mike Lawler (2:12)

I'm Mike Lawler, and I approve this message because I'll protect our community for your family and mine.

Brian Lehrer (2:18)

So we'll get into some fact-checking of that ad as we go, but first, I want to play a clip from a video that Cait Conley put on her YouTube channel just yesterday, directly addressing that ad. There was something that she said in an interview on Picks on Politics on Picks 11, hosted by Dan Manarino there. So not technically an ad, but she put it on her YouTube feed. So she's trying to dispel his claims. Here's the clip. It's 40 seconds. It starts with Dan Marino's question.

Dan Manarino (2:51)

And Congressman Mike Lawler is running ads right now with a snippet of a clip where you say we need new data centers. However, it's just part of what you said. So I want to get you on the record right now about what your position is on data centers.

Cait Conley (3:02)

We need to ensure that if a data center is built, it must be a net positive for the community, period.

And that means not allowing data center companies to exploit our community is to make them pay for the utility costs, whether it's water or energy, to not harm our environment, to look out for our families. So the standard should be very clear. A data center must be a net positive for the community or not built at all.

Brian Lehrer (3:31)

Cait Conley with Dan Manarino on PICS.

So certainly a different message. And I'll note that later in the interview, she did clarify that she supports Governor Hoco's data center one-year moratorium. So let's get into it. Issue number 10, 11, 12, right, AI and data centers. My guest for our last day on New York 17 specifically is again Timmy Facciola, founder of the local news outlet Judge Street Journal. And he's been covering this race closely. Timmy, Timmy, appreciate you joining us again for day three.

Timmy Facciola (4:04)

Glad to be back, Brian.

Brian Lehrer (4:06)

So give us a sense of the landscape before we get into the particulars of their claims. Do we know whether data centers have caused energy prices to go up in the district?

Timmy Facciola (4:17)

So the data centers that currently exist in Rockland County have all been built, with the exception of one, prior to 2021 These are the kind of data centers that use lower levels of megawatts of energy than the sort of the ones that Americans have come to know, like Medas in Louisiana, which uses 5,000. So these are all data centers that people have not tracked exactly as closely as the sort of bigger ones that are election issues this cycle.