How AI data center concerns could sway the midterms

Christy Strawser (0:00)

This is On Deadline, where the biggest stories, the smartest journalists, and the conversations that matter come together from Audacy news stations across the country.

When news breaks, the story doesn't stop there. I'm Christy Strawser. Let's get started. Let's start with a local issue that could weigh heavily on the midterm elections. Data centers. Here's KCBS in the Bay Area.

Steve (0:24)

Mark Sandlow, Mark, good morning. What kind of bipartisan response have we been seeing on these AI data centers?

Mark Sandlow (0:31)

The change is remarkable, Steve.

The Washington Post took a look at online posts assuming they were created by AI of politicians. Over the last couple of years, what they have to say about data centers, they found that just two years ago in 2024, roughly 80 to 90 percent were positive. It's like, look at this great thing. Data center is going to bring us artificial intelligence, jobs, high paying salaries. It's going to increase land values in the area.

Now, two years later, it's closer to Democrats, about five percent of their posts are positive. Republicans, it's much more, but still well under 50 percent. It is a combination of sort of classic, not in my backyard fears, noise from data center, concerns will consume power and raise electricity rates and it'll destroy rural areas. To outright panic over AI, which most people, including myself, only have a thin grasp of understanding. But with all the fears that you just mentioned out there, the idea that we ought to somehow ban these things, slow these things, stop these things, has become a huge issue. And while not so critical in democratically controlled California, there are a number of swing races in Ohio and Virginia and Pennsylvania, where this may be the determining issue. And right now, Democrats sort of is the more, you know, slow-go environmental party certainly have an advantage on this. And there's some races that would otherwise go Republican that could well be our toss-ups now and could well go Democrat because of people's resistance to building new data centers.

Steve (2:10)

So in some of these November races, it could come down to one candidate saying, I don't like data centers. And the other candidate saying, well, I don't like them even more than you.

Mark Sandlow (2:20)

Exactly. I mean, Ohio. Sherrod Brown is a former senator, Democrat, who's running against John Husted, who's the Republican who ousted him. Sherrod Brown has ads up right now saying, John Husted, the face of data centers. Husted says he's not in favor of data centers, but when he was in the state legislature, he did vote in favor of tax breaks for data centers. And that may be enough. And it's a complicated issue, obviously.

But on its surface, for the way that most people pay attention to it, saying no seems like a smart thing to do. I mean, President Trump is one person who's booking that trend, saying, ah, this is ridiculous. It'll bring jobs. He had some posts on there about it. If you want to stay backwards and dumb, we can not do data centers. Otherwise, I'm all in favor of them. But Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, they've introduced legislation for a moratorium on data centers, which of course would be a extraordinary step to take because it would allow the rest of the world to advance in AI without us.

It's something that still confounds people. And Steve, you've got a voice for radio. I'm not sure about mine. How hard would it be for AI to take over? You plug in Donald Trump, you plug in a few statistics. Next thing you know, you're talking to artificial intelligence and not me anymore.

Steve (3:51)

Yeah, we don't like to even think about that. Mark, thank you.

Christy Strawser (3:57)

AI has brought a seismic change to our lives, and so has this, television. Here's Dave Cohen in New Orleans.

Dave Cohen (4:06)

So let me know, I'm curious, how do you consume, quote unquote, television now? Are you watching it on a big 65 or 75 inch screen in your living room? Are you watching it on a little six inch screen on your smartphone? Do you watch broadcast television channels? Do you watch mostly streaming? Are you watching shorter content? Let me know, what is mostly speaking?

And we can include sports in the conversation.

What do you consume? How do you consume it and what do you consume it on? To help us kind of understand the current state of what we have historically called television, we have a media historian and the director of sports studio at University of Colorado, Professor Jared Broush joining us. We're seeing the major networks now carrying things like soccer and more tennis and other sports we didn't use to see. You used to have to go to try to find these sports on alternative cable channels or something or another. And now it's interesting to see how during, particularly on weekends, but even on weeknights, more and more of the main broadcasters and streamers content is sports. And it's not just baseball, basketball, and football.