Wisconsin's Gov Race is a Test Case for Data Center Opposition

**Kusha Navadar** (0:06)
This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast. It's Monday, August 31st.
I'm Kusha Navadar filling in for Brian today. A recent Gallup poll found that 7 out of 10 Americans oppose a data center being built in their area. And I think that's notable considering that politically, it can be hard to find something 7 out of 10 of us agree about anything. And that's blurring political lines. Listen to this clip from CNN of a Republican voter talking about his frustration with data centers in his area.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:41)
They're not good neighbors. They're damaging people. The Republican Party in this state doesn't care. I have been a staunch Republican my entire life. I'm done.
Anyone that was in office during this mess that hasn't supported us, it's not going to get my vote. And it's just, it's really changed my thinking.

**Kusha Navadar** (1:07)
That was a Republican voter discussing his thinking on who to vote for in November. In fact, around the country, data centers and what to do about them have started to blur the lines between political parties. Many voters seem to be willing to hop the line. Many candidates are flip-flopping and progressive and conservative leaders are finding themselves working together.
Data centers are an especially hot topic in Wisconsin's race for governor. And here to talk us through the landscape of that race and how data centers are reshaping the election status quo is Dan Kaufman, journalist and author of the recent piece in The New Yorker titled Could Data Centers Swing an Election in Wisconsin? He's also the author of the book The Fall of Wisconsin, The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics. Dan, welcome back to WNYC.

**Dan Kaufman** (1:58)
Hi, Kusha. Thank you so much for having me.

**Kusha Navadar** (2:00)
Of course. And Dan, before we fully get into the data center issue in Wisconsin, this show, the Brian Lehrer Show, famously based in New York City, can you tell the tri-state listeners why Wisconsin politics are important for us to be talking about?

**Dan Kaufman** (2:14)
Sure, sure. Well, Wisconsin has been really the epicenter of national politics in a couple of ways for at least the last decade.
Famously, it was one of a few swing states to put Trump, to put him over the top in the electoral college in 2016
And also in 2024, it also swung back to President Biden. And there's a lot of, the state has a really fascinating political history that at one time, it was quite a progressive epicenter, and it forged a lot of the policies that informed the New Deal and so on. And so it's had an outsized influence on national politics for generations. But in the last decade or so, it's been a real bellwether, probably the most pivotal swing state in the country. It's the only state that's really been on a small list of states that have determined the outcomes over the past three elections. So it's very important. The governor's race, obviously, the person who is leading the state will have a major impact. And one of the Republican candidate is a congressman named Tom Tiffany. And he was a very vigorous supporter of the stolen election conspiracies. So that's obviously going to be very important. Yeah.

**Kusha Navadar** (3:35)
So what I hear you saying is that Wisconsin bellwether, big term that I heard you just mentioned there, it's got outsized influence on the national stage and really an indication of what's to come is all the reason why this is important for New Yorkers and the Tri-State area to pay attention to. And also, not for nothing, but the first clip that we just heard wasn't from a voter in Wisconsin, it was from a voter in Texas about his frustrations with data centers in his area. And that indicates the national presence this has.
You spend a lot of time on the ground in Wisconsin. Do folks there sound like that guy we just heard from minus maybe the Texan accent when it comes to like the frustration of data centers?

**Dan Kaufman** (4:17)
Yeah, in many ways they do. And what I saw was a kind of grassroots movement in a county, Rock County, which borders Illinois, and it's home to Janesville and Beloit, two kind of de-industrialized small cities.
And there was an incredible organizing effort.
Republicans and Democrats alike, and quite conservative people, joining with progressives to advance a moratorium on an enormous data center. And I should mention these are hyperscale data centers. Data centers have been around for a long time, but these are specifically related to serving AI, and they require a vastly greater amount of power. For example, in Rock County, the data center that was proposed was going to require at least 100 times as much power as the largest employer in the county. And there's also enormous water use issues and so on. But yes, I saw a really remarkable coalition that did advance this moratorium, which looks like it will happen in Janesville, which is about 20 miles to the north. There was a data center being proposed right on the footprint of an enormous GM plant that closed in 2008 And that's one of the things that Trump administration is trying to do and push forward these data centers on deindustrialized sites, like the Janesville plant. But it looks like that will also probably be defeated. So it requires, yeah, you rarely see an issue like this. And the anger, I think, as I mentioned in the piece, goes much deeper than concerns about the water and electricity, but also gets into concerns about AI. And the data centers are sort of this tangible embodiment of AI. And a lot of people have really deep fears about this from all over the political spectrum, about their jobs, about the future of the planet, and so on.