Rising Opposition To Data Center Development Brings Together Both Sides Of The Political Spectrum

A growing wave of pushback to data center construction is coming from both sides of the aisle — creating significant risk for developers.

As an unprecedented data center construction boom sweeps across the U.S., environmental and quality-of-life issues are fueling an organized resistance. In a time of deep political polarization, opposition to data center development has become a rare cause being enthusiastically embraced by progressives and conservatives.

From the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to rural Missouri, the common narrative underpinning pushback against data center development paints it as corporate tech giants industrializing rural or residential towns, raiding their resources and despoiling their natural beauty and historic character.

These same concerns, framed differently, are gaining purchase with constituencies of vastly differing ideological leanings.

Last month, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lauded a successful effort to derail a planned data center in the town of St. Charles, Missouri, in left-leaning terms, calling it an example of “what happens when people stand up to unfettered corporate greed” and highlighting the environmental damage that would have come with the project.

The same week, the Louisville Courier Journal ran a letter to the editor in response to a planned data center build-out titled “Don’t California my Kentucky with data centers.” The writer, a self-described Republican, urged Kentuckians to look at what she called California’s characterless urban sprawl and accompanying crime and decay, and ask themselves if that’s what they want for their state. 

At the local level, a growing number of large-scale data center development plans have sparked heated battles over whether such projects are in the best interest of the community. The efforts to prevent data center projects have brought together unusual political bedfellows.

“It’s creating these untraditional alignments,” said Adam Waitkunas, president of Milldam Public Relations, a longtime data center PR firm that operates a dedicated community relations practice for developers. “It’s a hurdle for data center developers to have to navigate.”

These unconventional alliances are on full display in Prince William County, Virginia, where data centers have roiled local politics as much as anywhere in the U.S.  

The county is the location of the Digital Gateway, a proposed assemblage of data center campuses that would be one of the largest concentrations of these facilities in the world, whose fate remains uncertain amid a protected political and legal battle. A judge last month voided the project's zoning approval after a lawsuit from local residents, and the county has signaled plans to appeal the ruling. 

Digital Gateway would allow data center development on 2,139 acres next to the historic Manassas battlefield amid a stretch of agricultural land, neighborhoods and protected forest known as the Rural Crescent. Compass Datacenters and QTS have proposed a combined 30 data centers within the Digital Gateway footprint.

First proposed in 2021, this potential influx of industrial development generated furious local opposition almost immediately, and the question of whether widespread data center build-out is in the best interest of the county has remained the predominant issue in local politics. It has been debated in editorial pages and is a key wedge issue in county elections. 

Among the county’s elected officials, anti-data center efforts have been championed mainly by Republicans, many representing districts with data center proposals they say threaten residents’ quality of life and the area’s rural character. Yet these GOP officials have found themselves working with groups like the Sierra Club and other environmental campaigners typically aligned with Democrats, with whom they previously had little common cause.

The Coalition to Protect Prince William County, the group spearheading local anti-data center efforts, has found broad bipartisan appeal, its leadership bringing together both long-time left-wing activists and prominent Republican officials. Elections in recent years have demonstrated the power of data center fears to cut across party lines, with environmental groups and left-wing campaigners putting their weight behind a Republican candidate to successfully unseat pro-data center Democrats. 

Those supporting data center development have also spanned the political spectrum. The project’s developers and traditionally Republican-leaning pro-business groups have found themselves aligned with labor unions and Democratic politicians, who tout estimates of $400M in annual tax revenue from data centers and the subsequent benefits for local schools and government programs.

In a polarized political climate, these dynamics — mirrored in communities across the U.S.  — present challenges for organizers on both sides of data center disputes forced to navigate alliances between partners with vastly different worldviews and often accustomed to working against each other.

Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, points to a recent conversation with a local GOP official who expressed disbelief that she is now routinely being quoted in the press alongside a longtime Democratic rival.

“From the very beginning, I told both of them that whatever feelings you all might have about whatever other issue cannot get in the way of the threat we are facing, “ Schlossberg said. “And that has held up.”

While concerns around data centers have proved malleable to rhetorical appeals to both right and left, Schlossberg and other leaders of local data center opposition efforts say that maintaining their broad ideological coalitions requires steering clear of messaging that could signal partisan alignment or alienate potential supporters. 

Although climate change is a top concern for many of the environmental groups and activists involved in fighting projects in PWC, Schlossberg steers away from the topic to avoid pushing away partners on the right. Her environmental messaging instead focuses on more tangible impacts to residents, such as diesel fumes or damage to local landmarks like the Manassas battlefield.  

Steve Swope, an organizer of efforts to prevent a data center project known as Project Sail in Coweta County, Georgia, employs a similar tactic.

Although Coweta is far redder than Prince William County, the opposition effort has similarly brought together a range of ideological partners. Preventing fissures requires discipline in avoiding topics that could give the impression of a partisan fight, Swope said. In Coweta, that means avoiding rhetoric around carbon footprint or macroenvironmental concerns and focusing almost exclusively on Project Sale’s impact on local water resources.

“Talking about the carbon footprint is just not going to sway anybody in Coweta County — we’d alienate people that we really want to bring to our side, so we try to stay away from those issues and really talk in more practical terms,” Swope said.  “We've very deliberately stayed away from it.”

The strategy of focusing exclusively on hyperlocal quality of life concerns is an effective one, according to Milldam’s Waitkunas. When people feel their community or way of life is under threat, divisions within the community tend to get swept under the rug.

Data center opponents have successfully painted a dire picture of what the industry’s arrival will mean for the communities, Waitkunas says. Until developers can meaningfully refute that, they should expect unified opposition from both political directions. 

“It becomes what you might call community partisanship,” Waitkunas said. “You're fighting for your town and what you think it should be. All the traditional partisan talking points get thrown out the window, and you have people that would normally identify differently on the political landscape all coming together for one mission.”