Spillman’s 165-year-old farm sits across the street from the proposed complex. A soft-spoken retired bus driver, Spillman, 63, is a Republican who voted for President Donald Trump three times. Belt, a 51-year-old artist and marketing contractor, is a Democrat. For months, they’ve co-led a group called Protect Grove City, which mobilized a community effort to thwart the proposed data center. The residents’ concerns are legion: water usage, noise and environmental concerns, energy costs, the cloak of secrecy hanging over the project. “This is our community. What if we don’t want you here?” says Spillman, whose mother-in-law turned down an above-market offer from Headwaters of around $1.5 million for 30 acres of land.
—TIME illustration (Source image: Wong Yu Liang–Getty Images)
The fervor against data centers is spreading across the state. Ohio has some 200 data centers, making it one of the biggest hubs in the country. In a former swing state that went red in the Trump era, Republicans admit the groundswell of political opposition to data centers has created a political opening for Ohio Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.
A national Gallup poll published in May found that more than 70% of voters oppose building an AI data center in their area. In Ohio, where the average household’s electric bill climbed some 15% in the past year and more than 66% over the past decade, the sentiment is even more negative. A September survey by Bowling Green State University found that nearly 80% of Ohioans support a moratorium on data centers. More than 100 local governments in Ohio have reportedly enacted data-center moratoriums; in November, at least 10 will vote on adding a data-center ban to their charters, while two others will decide whether to recall mayors who cut data-center deals. In the eyes of opponents, the facilities—and the powerful AI industry that backs them—have come to represent an attack on their safety, jobs, pocketbooks, and quality of life.
Patty Spillman —Maddie McGarvey for TIMEJen Belt, Spillman and Belt lead Protect Grove City, which fights the Headwaters project —Maddie McGarvey for TIMESome Democrats believe data centers could be a decisive issue in tight races, especially in red states like Texas, Iowa, and Ohio. In those states and others, voters have told pollsters they trust Democrats more on the issue. President Donald Trump has positioned himself as one of the industry’s biggest champions, deriding opponents of data centers as “backwards and poor.” The wave of populist anger has “become the one thing that unites Americans right now,” says Megan Mullin, a UCLA political-science professor. “They connect to bigger themes that are becoming really important in American politics—around affordability, around energy affordability, around suspicion and discomfort about AI, about populist resistance to the accumulation of wealth and tech titans.”
Meta, which has been rapidly building out its data-center infrastructure to fuel its AI push, made plans to erect a $1 billion campus in the area. The company hashed out the deal in secret last year, according to city documents and news reports, using a private LLC and nondisclosure agreements with local officials. After Meta was outed as the company behind the data center, the social media giant and Piqua government officials said the project would bring economic investment to the region. In a statement, Meta told TIME the company is reviewing its use of nondisclosure agreements.
Don Leonard leads a round table discussion about data centers in Piqua, Ohio on Oct. 7 —Maddie McGarvey for TIME
A former city and regional planning professor at The Ohio State University, Leonard, 48, sports a stubbly beard and speaks with a deliberate unpretentiousness. Normally, a progressive candidate wouldn’t stand much of a shot in a congressional district that’s been represented by Republicans for the past 15 years. The incumbent, former coal-industry lobbyist Mike Carey, won by 13 points two years ago. But by the time Leonard won the primary in May, residents in the district, which includes Grove City, were aflame over data centers. Leonard pushed his team to add a data-center question to their polling. They found more than 70% of likely voters in the 15th District wanted greater say over where data centers are located and how they operate. “If we were going to message on it, we had to confirm quantitatively what we knew from listening to the constituents,” Leonard explains in an interview at a modern co-working space in Columbus. “Which is that data centers are one of the most bipartisan issues in Central Ohio right now.”
It’s not clear whether the backlash will be enough to catapult Leonard into contention in a solidly Republican district. There has been no non-partisan polling in the race, nor any public debates, and Carey holds a clear fundraising advantage, raking in $4 million to Leonard’s $1.2 million, according to campaign filings, though a recent influx of spending against Leonard is a sign Republicans may be a little nervous.
On a crisp fall day, Sherrod Brown takes the microphone during a small rally outside a Franklin County strip mall. He begins with talking points about economic inequality that he could have fed this crowd of Democratic organizers and voters at any point during his 18 years representing the state in the Senate. But then Brown pivots to an attack line that might have landed with a thud even a year ago. “These data centers are in Ohio now thanks to Jon Husted,” Brown says of his Republican opponent. “They come into communities. They gulp up the land. They swallow the water. Then they get these huge tax breaks.”
Power lines run along a cornfield at the site of a proposed data center development in Grove City —Maddie McGarvey for TIME
Back then, Husted, like other political leaders in both parties, often celebrated tech companies like Google and Amazon, which built the sprawling campuses, as a boost to Ohio’s economy. Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce called Brown’s critiques hypocritical, noting that in 2015 the former Senator himself praised an Amazon Web Services data-center project in Ohio, calling it “great news.”
The party is eager to press that advantage. Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, has called for a conditional moratorium on data centers until they meet certain requirements, such as covering the cost of their own electricity, meeting environmental standards, and participating in community-benefit agreements. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee, wants to force hyperscale data centers to cover electricity costs and abide by air- and water-quality standards. Acton has assailed Ramaswamy for not committing to selling off his investments in tech and AI stocks, calling these holdings a conflict of interest.
Ike Stage first became the mayor of Grove City in 1988. A retired banker who helped set up the local chamber of commerce, he credits cheapish land, a convenient location, and a business-friendly climate for the steady stream of calls he’s fielded from developers over the years. Companies like medical manufacturer American Nitrile have moved in, along with three hospitals and two scientific-research facilities. “Not many cities can say that,” Stage says in an interview at city hall, where brightly colored maps of the area adorn the walls.
Seven years later, Headwaters Site Development, founded by former Google data-center infrastructure leader Michael Lebow, had a similar thought. It contacted property owners in a rural area just south of Grove City’s limits. One of the homesteads belonged to Patty Spillman’s family, which rejected the deal. “Most of us turned them down,” Spillman says. But not all. By this spring, Headwaters had found enough homeowners willing to sell to cobble together the necessary land.
Mayor Richard Stage opposes putting major new development projects up for referendum —Maddie McGarvey for TIMEThe anger emboldened the activists. Belt circulated a petition calling for the city council to reject any upcoming data-center applications. The group posted negative information about the facilities on their personal social media pages, as well as in popular Facebook groups, and put up no data centers signs near the proposed site.
Yet the implied legal threat intensified the community pushback against the project on the eve of the moratorium vote. In June, the moratorium passed 6-1. Emboldened, the anti-data-center advocates with Protect Grove City decided the one-year moratorium wasn’t enough, and wrote a proposed amendment to the city’s charter, which functions like a governing constitution. It would prohibit the city from approving zoning applications for developments that occupy at least 50 acres, use more than 20 megawatts of power at peak capacity, or consume more than 500,000 gallons of water per day unless a majority of voters have backed the project in a public referendum. To drum up support, they canvassed local farmers’ markets, parks, and sporting events to ask people to sign a petition to put the measure on the ballot in November. Within a few weeks, they secured enough signatures.
Councilman Mohamed Omar, who opposes data center development, in Grove City —Maddie McGarvey for TIMEThe city has been sending mailers to residents explaining the amendment’s potential effects. Residents have gotten into bitter personal disputes over the amendment in Facebook groups. “It’s bad,” says Omar. “It almost feels like the city is torn.”
To Stage, tech companies have done a poor job trumpeting the benefits the facilities bring to local communities, allowing residents’ anxieties about the industry to flourish. He likens the backlash to the fears Americans had about railroad expansion during the 19th century, when rural farmers worried about the effect the technology might have on their livestock. Americans eventually got used to trains. But Stage also recognizes that he’s on the short side of public opinion. Stage is up for re-election next year. “I’ve won most elections pretty handily, and I’ve been through 11 of them,” he says. “But you never, never make that assumption.” —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein
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