With the midterm elections less than four months away, data center development is becoming a central political issue that could determine the balance of power in Congress and in statehouses across the U.S.

Rising public opposition to AI infrastructure has led Democrats and Republicans to shift their approach to the industry in recent weeks.

This week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a memo to major tech and artificial intelligence firms warning that increasingly negative public sentiment toward data centers is hurting the GOP’s chances in a critical Senate race in Ohio.

In the letter, first reported by Axios, the NRSC says Democrats are making data centers a “centerpiece” of their campaign against incumbent Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican. Husted’s Democratic opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, has spent millions of dollars on advertisements labeling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio.”

This strategy is proving effective, according to the NRSC. A Fox News poll conducted this month shows Brown carrying an 8-point lead in the race.

The NRSC argues that the stakes of the Ohio contest for Big Tech extend well beyond a single Senate race.

In the letter, party leaders warn that a Democratic victory would not only hand a Senate seat to a prominent critic of data center development but also signal to candidates in other key data center markets that campaigning against data centers is a winning strategy.

A Husted defeat would make it significantly harder for Big Tech to build the data centers needed to support its AI ambitions, GOP leaders wrote. The letter urged AI firms to be more aggressive in making the case for data center development ahead of the election, saying the industry hasn’t effectively communicated “who benefits, who pays, and why a community should want one.”

“If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice — and they will not go near the next one,” the memo says. “This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.”

But it may be too late to head off the emergence of data centers as a key campaign issue and line of attack in congressional and gubernatorial races from Wisconsin to Florida.

Even some candidates who had previously been major boosters for data center development are doing an about-face on the issue, with past support for data centers increasingly viewed as a reelection risk.

Just over a year ago, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, participated in a Pittsburgh event featuring President Donald Trump touting $90B in AI infrastructure and energy investment in the state. The Shapiro administration promoted data centers as a critical economic driver for Pennsylvania, a position that facilitated a flood of proposed projects.

Now, with data centers increasingly unpopular — and with Shapiro's Republican opponent in November campaigning on halting data center development — the governor’s stance toward data centers is shifting.

Earlier this week, Shapiro announced he is targeting the industry with new restrictions, signing an executive order that will require any new data center projects to receive approval from local authorities to get the state government’s blessing. The measure could prevent many proposed data center projects in Pennsylvania from advancing.

“We’ve seen an unacceptable number of speculative proposals for data centers swamp our commonwealth — many of them led by developers who have no regard for local communities,” Shapiro said Tuesday.

While the Trump administration’s staunch support for building AI infrastructure has made data center opposition largely a Democratic issue at the federal level, Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity, is far from the only GOP candidate campaigning against data centers.

This dynamic is also on display in Wisconsin, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany has attempted to portray his Democratic opponent as the pro-data center candidate, even as Tiffany’s antipathy toward data centers puts him at odds with a Trump administration with whom he is otherwise closely aligned. His campaign launched television ads branding Democratic nominee Davide Cowley as “Data Center David,” citing comments that Cowley wanted the state to be a global data center hub.

“My priority is protecting Wisconsin families, taxpayers, farmland and water, not turning our state into a data center hub for the ‘entire globe,’” the Republican says in the TV spot.

Yet Wisconsin may also show the limits of making opposition to data centers the centerpiece of a political campaign. In the state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, progressive candidate Francesca Hong aggressively campaigned against the construction of AI infrastructure, pledging to pause new data center development and to “control-alt-delete” the industry with stricter regulations.

But this strategy failed to deliver on election day. Not only did Hong lose the election to Crowley, she also lost in communities where opposition to data center projects has been the most intense, according to Heatmap.

She was soundly defeated by 8 points in Port Washington, where residents are battling a proposed $15B Oracle and OpenAI campus. Strikingly, she also failed to win a majority of votes in Wrightstown, a community where voters approved a referendum on the very same ballot banning data centers.