This Democratic Nominee for Governor Refuses to Condemn Data Centers

Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate David Crowley is taking a more nuanced position—and his Republican opponent is taking advantage.

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The nationwide backlash to data centers has become so widespread that it’s even hard to find Republican politicians who openly embrace them—with the exception of President Trump, of course. So why is the Democratic nominee for governor in Wisconsin touting their benefits? It’s a question many puzzled Democrats are asking, given that the governor’s mansion is a crucial bulwark against the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.

Wisconsin has the opportunity to become “an AI and a data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe,” David Crowley, who defeated progressive Francesca Hong earlier this month, said in a 2025 candidate forum. His opponent, GOP Representative Tom Tiffany, has pounced, dropping an ad last week with that quote and calling Crowley “Data Center David Crowley.” “My priority is protecting Wisconsin families, taxpayers, farmland, and water, not turning our state into a data center hub for the ‘entire globe,’” Tiffany said in a recent statement to WisPolitics.

Painting Crowley as pro–data center is a no-brainer for Tiffany, given voter sentiment on the issue. Polling suggests that voters are increasingly negative about data centers. In October, 55 percent of those asked in a Marquette Law School Poll survey of Wisconsin registered voters said that the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. But in a poll from July, that number jumped to 76 percent. No wonder even the most pro-business Republicans, like Senate candidate Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, have come out in favor of strict regulations on data centers.

But as much as Tiffany would like voters to believe he opposes data centers while his Democratic opponent supports them, the reality is a lot more complicated.

Ultimately, the two candidates have similar policy views on data centers, as a piece in Vox laid out last week. Neither one has called for a moratorium on building them, as Hong did. Tiffany has called for rolling back a state subsidy on data centers, which Crowley hasn’t matched, but otherwise the candidates are aligned on the issue, calling for local control over construction and environmental standards to protect natural resources.

Joe Zepecki, a Democratic political strategist who lives in Wisconsin, sees Tiffany’s portrayal of Crowley’s position as an act of desperation from a weaker candidate. “Tiffany is running uphill with an 800 pound anchor on his back,” he said. “I think the fact that the Tiffany campaign chose to engage on data centers right out of the gate is because they know he has vulnerabilities.”

But the race seems to be tight: The latest polls, from mid-August, show Crowley up by three or four percentage points with over two months to go until Election Day. Crucially, the governor’s race could also affect downballot races for the state Senate and Assembly, which have been in Republican control since 2011. During that time, Republicans gerrymandered the state to their advantage. Now Democrats have the best chance they’ve had in years to take back the legislature and try to undo some of the damage the GOP has done, like a 2011 law abolishing collective bargaining for public workers. “If we don’t nominate someone who can win statewide and bring legislative majorities with them, so much of the work of the last eight to ten years is for naught, and so the stakes are enormous,” Zepecki said.

Charles Franklin, a professor of law and public policy who directs the Marquette Law School Poll, said that Tiffany’s focus on data centers could help him appeal to independents who, as his polling suggests, are against data centers at higher rates than Republicans are. He also sees Tiffany’s rhetoric as a way to connect with rural conservative voters, who make up a large part of his base, and rally them. “He just did an event yesterday in western Wisconsin, saying he was, as governor, not going to let data centers take over farmland in this lovely rural area of western Wisconsin,” Franklin said on Monday. “He’s doing it in a way that speaks to the rural parts of the state, which [are] his natural electoral constituents, even if there’s not, in fact, bulldozers coming to bulldoze your farmland.”

In response to Tiffany’s attacks, Crowley is reminding voters that Tiffany hasn’t introduced legislation restricting data centers during his time in Congress. Meanwhile, Tiffany has said that Crowley takes money from data center proponents, which is likely a reference to donations from union interests. Some unions are in favor of data centers since their members would build the infrastructure, but Zepecki cautioned against characterizing all Wisconsin labor interests as pro–data center.

The stakes of this debate feel incredibly high in Wisconsin, explained Amy Barrilleaux, the communications director at Clean Wisconsin, an environmental organization that has called for a pause on data center development. “This is not normal times,” she said. “If we don’t take a minute and understand and prepare and ask questions and get some transparency, we’re going to be looking at a state that’s really different than the state our kids grew up in.”

Nearly two weeks after massive storms with 100 mph winds tore through Indiana, nearly 30,000 residents are still without power, with roughly a third of them in the predominantly Black city of Gary. “We’re at day twelve, and twelve days is too long for families to be without power,” the city’s mayor, Eddie Melton, said in a video posted on Facebook. “Twelve days is too long for parents to worry about their children and for businesses to lose revenue and for families to wonder when the relief is finally going to come. I want you to know I share that frustration.”

“We’re always in survival mode in Gary,” hairstylist Shatiya Hardin told the Associated Press. “And I think that’s probably why it wasn’t so much of an uproar because the first few days, it was like, ‘OK, we’re used to this.... but this is the second week now. It’s not OK for us to continually be in survival mode, doing the best that we can.”

Gary has faced decades of neglect since the collapse of its steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s, a fact many residents and outsiders believe is directly related to its status as Indiana’s only majority-Black city. Its poverty rate is roughly 30 percent, and the energy grid that failed during the early-August storm was left vulnerable in part due to a failure to do routine tree maintenance by NIPSCO, northern Indiana’s power monopoly. Indiana is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country, with only two of its nine districts viable for Democratic candidates. The state’s 1st congressional district includes Gary—and currently “leans” toward incumbent Democrat Frank Mrvan, who won his primary last week and who welcomed FEMA’s recent federal emergency declaration.

In an issue brief for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth—the first in a three-part series—visiting fellow Mary Beech explores how weaknesses in federal data collection make it difficult to know how broadly artificial intelligence is being adopted by workers—and to what degree it is changing the labor market. “How does the adoption of AI by firms affect worker employment and unemployment, compensation, jobs lost, and job opportunities?” she writes. “As this brief demonstrates, no single data source can answer this question, federal or otherwise.” As Beech notes, there are several efforts in Congress to rectify this problem, in the form of two bipartisan bills—one sponsored by Virginia Senator Mark Warner, and one introduced by New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan.

Over at the Institute for Policy Studies, associate fellow Christine Ahn argues in favor of Trump’s order for the U.S. to “substantially reduce” its military drills with South Korea. “While any diplomatic overture from this administration should be viewed with skepticism,” she writes, “progressives shouldn’t miss an opportunity to take a principled position that advances peace, a reduced U.S. military footprint, and the security of the American and Korean people.” Ahn says that instead of “parroting the political establishment that benefits from forever wars, progressives should challenge … the belief that military superiority produces security, that militaristic ‘deterrence’ is stabilizing, and that allies exist for the U.S. to position them. This is not producing peace.”

In Closing: Four Questions For

Debru Carthan, executive vice president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West

Q: Who are you, and what are you working on right now?

Q: What is the most difficult thing about your line of work?

Q: What was your biggest success in the last year or two?

Q: What keeps you going in these stressful times?

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Democratic candidates are pretty well positioned to win governor’s races in both Ohio and Georgia, two states that haven’t had a Democratic governor in a while. Who were the last Democratic governors of those two states? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in Wednesday’s newsletter.)

Wait, Are Dems Ahead in ... Arkansas?

Read about a wild poll showing Tom Cotton trailing Hallie Shoffner, Xavier Becerra’s senior slump of a campaign in California, and more ...

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Do Democrats have a chance to flip a Senate seat in Arkansas? One poll this week suggested they might—stunningly finding that Republican Senator Tom Cotton is trailing his Democratic opponent in the deep red state. Experts say not to take it too seriously: The poll is almost certainly an outlier. But, they add, there might be some useful lessons in it.

This week, Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College released a survey of 1,217 likely Arkansas voters, finding that Democrat Hallie Shoffner, a farmer and businesswoman, was narrowly ahead of Cotton in the race for Senate. 47.4 percent of respondents said they would vote for Shoffner, and 44 percent backed Cotton. That’s a shocking result; the Cook Political Report considers the Arkansas race a “Solid Republican,” and another poll of likely voters found Cotton ahead by 16 points. Arkansas has been solidly red for around 15 years, and the last time the state elected a Democratic senator was in 2008.

So why does it look like a Democrat has a chance? One answer can be found in the nature of polling itself. “People like to sometimes call polling a prediction. It’s not a prediction, it’s a measurement,” said Robert Coon, managing partner with Impact Management Group, who helped craft the questions for the poll. The poll doesn’t necessarily reflect how Arkansans will vote on November 3, but instead captures how they feel in the present, before spending and advertising has kicked into high gear.

“There’s a ton of time between now and the general election,” said Jay Barth, a professor of politics at Hendrix College who helped design the poll. “Tom Cotton has dramatically more resources than Shoffner.”

Cotton ended June with nearly $10 million in cash on hand. Shoffner had just $864,000. In the 45 to 60 days before the election, both campaigns will likely start spending their money in earnest, putting up more TV ads and sending out mailers. According to Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard University, most voters don’t start paying full attention to the candidates until at least September; it’s not unusual for earlier polls to yield some bizarre results.

So far in 2026, polls have already proven to be bad predictors of how voters actually behave in the ballot box. In Michigan’s Senate primary, polls predicted that Abdul El-Sayed would defeat Haley Stevens in a blowout. Instead, he won by just one percentage point. A similar phenomenon happened in Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary, where Francesca Hong was widely expected to beat David Crowley by double digits according to polling; she ultimately lost by less than one percentage point.

“People definitely shouldn’t overweight what one poll says, and there will obviously be more outside polls [and] inside polls that are done,” said Coon. “Really, it’s about a trend line.”

Still, the poll suggests that independents in Arkansas are increasingly frustrated with President Donald Trump and the war in Iran. “Over the last eight election cycles, independent voters have traditionally [leaned] two to one with Republicans,” Coon explained. In this poll though, independents supported the Democratic candidate........

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