A year ago, most Wisconsin residents thought little about data centers, according to local leaders and journalists.
But today, the computing facilities — and where they get their energy — are a key issue in the hotly contested Aug. 11 Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor.
At a lively town hall last week in Milwaukee, five Democratic candidates vied to outdo their peers in tough talk about data centers and their developers, described as “Big Tech oligarchs” by state Rep. Francesca Hong, the leading contender according to recent polling.
Whoever wins the nomination will run against Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate on the ballot in November and a current U.S. representative for north and central Wisconsin. He too has focused part of his campaign on curbing data centers, promising to prevent the use of farmland for the facilities and repeal tax breaks for them. But unlike the Democratic hopefuls arguing that AI facilities should be powered largely by clean energy, Tiffany is pushing state regulators to keep decades-old coal plants online past their retirement dates to help meet ballooning power demand.
While data centers are an increasingly hot-button topic nationwide in the run-up to the November elections, the tension is particularly pronounced in Wisconsin as developers have recently flocked to the state, drawn by its cool climate, access to water, robust transmission and generation infrastructure, and generous tax incentives passed by the Republican-dominated legislature and signed by current Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2023.
