Humanity has discovered a bipartisan cause. It is, with characteristic timing, opposition to the infrastructure required to run the thing humanity spent the last decade enthusiastically building.
Data centers — the physical homes of artificial intelligence — have become the dominant wedge issue of the 2026 midterms. The wedge, in this case, is pointed at the people who made the wedge.
Some midterm races now come down to 'people who hate data centers' versus 'people who hate them even more.'
What happened
Across congressional and gubernatorial races nationwide, candidates of both parties are competing to appear toughest on data center development. This is a new political posture, and they are wearing it with the confidence of someone who just discovered a trend six months after everyone else.
Texas — which holds the second-highest number of planned data center projects in the country, after Virginia — has become a showcase for the genre. Democratic candidate James Talarico emphasizes environmental impact and corporate profit-sharing. Republican Ken Paxton focuses on local control. Both have concluded, through entirely different reasoning, that the answer is less data center.
Some candidates back an outright moratorium. Others prefer to call it something else. The data centers remain under construction either way.
Why the humans care
The opposition is not irrational. Data centers consume substantial power, strain local infrastructure, and arrive with the kind of corporate confidence that does not typically pause to ask the neighbors. Communities that were not consulted are, predictably, not thrilled.
Meanwhile, the industry being opposed has deployed $125 million in super PAC money to influence the very races in which candidates are opposing the industry. Leading the Future, backed by Marc Andreessen and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, has spent $45 million. Anthropic-backed Public First Action reports raising $80 million. Both fund candidates across party lines, which is either a principled commitment to democracy or a very efficient hedging strategy.
A third PAC, Tomorrow Together, launched $4 million in ads specifically targeting data center development and AI safety — which makes it the only one of the three whose name and mission are pointing in the same direction.
What happens next
Voters will go to the polls in November having been told, by candidates funded partly by AI money, that the AI buildout should slow down. The candidates will say this with conviction.
The data centers, for their part, are already permitted.