Turn on the TV this fall and you’ll see it: one political ad after another, attacking data centers or attacking an opponent for supporting them.
Campaigns across the country have spent tens of millions of dollars on ads mentioning data centers this cycle, according to ad trackers, and nearly all of them cast the facilities as villains, blaming them for rising electric bills, water use and tax breaks for big corporations.
Kate Gibbs understands why. She just doesn’t like it.
“The politically expedient thing, because the public is scared and doesn’t know the truth, is to just say, okay, I’m against it too,” she said. “And I believe that policymakers have a responsibility to tell the truth.”
Gibbs, Deputy Director of the Engineers Labor-Employer Cooperative, known as ELEC 825, said sees it at every level, from the more than 100 towns she says have moved to ban data centers to the candidates running for Congress.
There are few messages that move voters these days, she said. So, when one works, politicians use it, whether it’s accurate or not.
“When you find something that works like this, even if you’re not kind of being intellectually honest, it’s like, well, this is going to move voters where I need them to be,” she said.
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Why does this message work so well?
Ben Dworkin, founding Director of the Rowan Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship at Rowan University, said it goes deeper than the usual NIMBY fights over noise, water or power.
“My sense is that the anti-data centers campaign messaging is striking a chord right now because of something deeper than the top-line NIMBY environmental/energy concerns; namely, public unease with Big Tech as an industry,” he said.
Worries about algorithms and privacy, he said, along with the political power of the tech industry and its biggest names, leave voters with little patience for its building projects.
“This is primarily a NIMBY issue, but it also taps into ongoing public concerns about Big Tech,” he said.
Will data centers become a partisan issue in next year’s legislative races? Dworkin isn’t ready to say.
“A week is a lifetime in politics and we are many weeks away from the 2027 campaign season,” he said.
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Both Gibbs and Dworkin pointed to Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who has rejected a statewide ban and instead wants guardrails, with towns deciding for themselves.
That’s a different path than the one taken across the river, where New York Gov. Kathy Hochul imposed a one-year moratorium.
Gibbs called Sherrill’s approach commendable, precisely because a ban would have been the easy route.
Dworkin said Sherrill’s popularity gives her room to take the harder path.
“The benefit of being largely popular — as Sherrill is currently — is that you can stake out a nuanced position on this issue and then have the opportunity to explain your thinking, and even more importantly, educate the public as to your logic,” he said.
Not every politician has that luxury, he said.
It takes “the time, means, credibility and skills,” he said.
Some lawmakers are trying anyway. At the Southern New Jersey Development Council’s Sound Off! conference last month, state Sen. Michael Testa (R-Vineland), who represents Millville, the site of South Jersey’s most contested data center proposal, said developers need to explain their projects to the public.
“If you don’t give the jury a story, they’ll make one up,” he said.
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To be sure, there is plenty of confusion. A recent Rutgers question may not have asked the question correctly.
An FDU poll released last week indicated negative opinions with big tech is an issue, too.
Gibbs said all of this is allowing fear to take over.
“When there’s something that people are afraid of, it’s like the logical piece kind of goes away,” she said.
Some may think the election Tuesday will slow the rhetoric.
Dworkin feels it needs to be something other than the calendar. This goes beyond campaigning, he said.
Dworkin said there’s no quick fix for misinformation about data centers or anything else.
The answer, he said, will involve “a robust, independent mainstream press and an audience that will slow down their consumption of news to read past the headlines and first paragraph.”
