By Helen Coster and Dawn Kopecki<\/p>\n
NEW YORK, Sept 3 (Reuters) \u2013 Less than a year ago, Texas Governor Greg Abbott hailed Texas as the \u201cepicenter of AI development.\u201d Now, in his bid for re-election, he is calling for sweeping new restrictions on data centers.<\/p>\n
And he\u2019s hardly alone.<\/p>\n
Across the country, as Democrats ride a wave of local opposition to data centers ahead of the November elections, Republicans are increasingly breaking from U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s pro-AI agenda.<\/p>\n
Republican candidates in at least five states \u2013 including Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania \u2013 have recently adopted tougher \u200brhetoric on data centers or proposed restrictions on their development, creating a new fault line within the party.<\/p>\n
The debate is \u201cpitting pro-growth instincts and the push to beat China in the \u200cAI race against a populist backlash over affordability,\u201d said Brad Dayspring, a Republican strategist with Purple Strategies.<\/p>\n
The most striking shift is happening in Texas, a conservative, oil-rich state that has worked for years to reinvent itself as a national tech hub. Abundant land and business-friendly regulations have attracted leading tech companies like SpaceX and Oracle and lured wealthy entrepreneurs like Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
Even there, though, public sentiment has turned sharply against data centers, which opponents say drive up electric and water bills, pollute the night sky with lights and don\u2019t create enough tax revenue or jobs to justify the incentives states have paid.<\/p>\n
An August poll by the Texas Politics Project found only 30% of respondents would support a data center in their community.<\/p>\n
Big tech companies \u200care trying \u200bto play catch-up, pouring more than $300 million into the midterms, according to election records, company and committee disclosures, and rolling out a massive ad \u2060campaign to educate consumers about the benefits of data centers.<\/p>\n
But \u2060as the backlash spreads, Abbott is calling for expansive new regulations on data centers, the repeal of tax incentives for their construction and restrictions on development in rural communities. A state audit he announced on August 3 has effectively paused approvals for new grid connections.<\/p>\n
Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, locked in a tight Senate race, has also hardened his stance on AI, unveiling a plan late last month that his campaign says will keep America competitive while stopping the \u201cnegative impact of data centers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abbott and Paxton\u2019s rhetorical pivot puts them at odds with Trump, the leader of their party, \u200bwho warned in a Truth Social post Monday that Americans fighting data centers risked ending up \u201cbackwards and poor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republican officials have downplayed the split with Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to advise our candidates to do what\u2019s best for them and their communities,\u201d said Natalie Baldassarre, national press secretary for the Republican National Committee. \u201cIt\u2019s not a one-size-fits-all approach.\u201d<\/p>\n
JOCKEYING FOR POSITION<\/p>\n
Texas is one of the nation\u2019s largest and fastest-growing markets for AI-related data center \u2060development, hosting OpenAI\u2019s flagship Stargate campus in Abilene,\u00a0among other major projects.<\/p>\n
Paxton once embraced AI data centers as an engine of \u2060job creation and economic growth. As a state senator in 2013, he voted for a tax incentive that later became a major driver of data-center investment \u200bin Texas.<\/p>\n
In February, local commissioners in Hood County, Texas,\u00a0requested Paxton\u2019s opinion on whether they had the legal authority to temporarily halt development of data centers. Half a year later, the request is still pending, according to \u200bthe attorney general\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Paxton\u2019s opponent, Democrat James Talarico, has accused him of political opportunism, pointing to campaign contributions he\u2019s accepted from the tech industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s scared his ties \u200cto big data center companies will lose him the election, so he\u2019s making a sad attempt to reverse course,\u201d Talarico said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Paxton campaign did not respond to questions about his shifting position on data centers, but accused Talarico of taking money from some of the same corporate interests and voting for a sales tax incentive for large data centers as a Texas state senator in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a hypocrite who\u2019s bought and paid for by his coastal billionaire donors,\u201d Paxton\u2019s campaign said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Both candidates trying to position themselves as populists standing up to deep-pocketed donors is a sign, analysts say, of how much the ground has \u2060shifted.<\/p>\n
For Republicans especially, who have long positioned themselves as champions of corporate America, there is growing recognition that \u201cit\u2019s important to put some distance between themselves and the big tech companies behind these data centers,\u201d said David Karol, a political scientist at the University of Maryland.<\/p>\n
In the governor\u2019s race, Abbott\u2019s Democratic opponent Gina Hinojosa has called data centers \u201cthe fight of this election season.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knows that his temporary pause on the \u2060approval of new data center developments ends November 4, the day after the \u200celection,\u201d Hinojosa said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Eduardo Leal, press secretary for Abbott\u2019s campaign, said in a statement that the governor \u201chas directed Texas regulators to ensure data \u2060centers do not take water needed by communities or power needed by the Texas grid \u2026 lower electricity costs for consumers, and pay for their \u200bown electricity infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n
BIG TECH \u200cPLAYS CATCH-UP<\/p>\n
That data centers have become such a prominent feature of this year\u2019s midterm elections is a product of big tech being slow \u200bto respond to public \u2060backlash, observers\u00a0say.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo years of local opposition and the industry wasn\u2019t necessarily engaging at the level they needed to,\u201d said veteran political strategist Kevin Madden, a former adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n
Leading AI companies are trying to rectify the mistake.<\/p>\n
Two super PACs with ties to Anthropic have so far spent more than $2.6 million in Texas, while super PACs linked to OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman have spent more than $4.8 million across the state, federal election filings show. Meta has given about $1.4 million to a super PAC focused on candidates for state office in Texas, according to tax filings.<\/p>\n
But changing the conversation will be an uphill battle for data center supporters, who now face resistance from Democrats and Republicans alike.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s striking at a time when the parties seem to disagree on everything that there\u2019s been bipartisan movement against data centers,\u201d Karol said.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Helen Coster and Dawn Kopecki in \u200bNew York; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Alistair Bell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Helen Coster and Dawn Kopecki NEW YORK, Sept 3 (Reuters) \u2013 Less than a year ago, Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":424952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-424951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/424952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}