Former Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is positioning the fight against artificial intelligence data centers near the forefront of his campaign against Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) as he aims to return to the upper chamber.
Brown, a former three-term senator from the Buckeye State who fell to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) in 2024, released two new advertisements in July, jumping on the anti-data center movement catching fire among environmentalists in states such as Ohio.
“Ohio’s electric grid: big corporations treat it like a game, gobbling up energy to feed their data centers, no matter how much it raises our prices. It’s the latest way they’ve rigged the system, costing the average Ohioan thousands of dollars, with prices still going up,” Brown said in a July advertisement, which included imagery of Pac-Man gobbling up dots on electricity lines.
Brown pitched the message in an affordability-minded way, vowing to make sure “data centers pay the full cost of their electricity,” not neighboring Ohioans, and to ensure that the artificial intelligence companies “don’t get to play games with your energy bill.”
Across the country, data center skeptics have become increasingly concerned with how the AI infrastructure increases electricity demand and can reportedly jack up nearby electric bills. A Gallup poll from May found that 7 in 10 Americans oppose having data centers in their own backyards, as they raise concerns about the effects on electric bills and local water supply.
However, data centers can also provide more local employment opportunities and grow local commercial tax bases, all while developing the domestic AI industry. Data centers have become a political pressure point on both the Right and the Left, as politicians weigh the infrastructure’s environmental impact versus their revolutionary impact on America’s AI industry.
Brown falls in line with much of the Left as he takes on data centers, quoting Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer in a recent ad calling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio.”
Husted has helped grow AI data center investment in Ohio, calling the state the “tech hub of the Midwest” in 2024 when he was lieutenant governor. But the senator has also championed ratepayer protections throughout the state’s data center development, joining a White House roundtable in March to boost President Donald Trump‘s Ratepayer Protection Pledge.
“If America wants economic and national security dominance, we must lead in technology and AI to stay ahead of adversaries like China. But, this innovation requires energy and Ohio families are concerned about the impact on their own bills. I’m grateful to those who signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge today and to the president for making this happen for working Ohio families,” Husted said in a March statement.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to Husted’s campaign for comment.
WAR ON DATA CENTERS A FRONT IN VITAL FIGHT FOR AI
Husted and Brown are set to face off in the November special election to fill Vice President JD Vance’s seat in Ohio. Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) appointed Husted in early 2025. Cook Political Report pings the seat as a toss-up race, while Husted and Brown have swung between single digits in recent polling on the race. Husted took the latest New York Times/Siena poll by a three-point margin.
Moreno defeated Brown in 2024 by 3.6 percentage points when Trump sat atop the ballot.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
