Data centers are a generational Democratic opportunity in rural Ohio
It will be nothing short of political malpractice without a clear moral stance on a chief animating issue of our times.
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The Democratic Party has a problem in rural Ohio.
It’s not a national problem, not unique to the state party, despite Ohio’s demographics, the party’s history of ineptitude, or the large swaths of information deserts filled by Fox News and other oligarch-funded propaganda organs.
But Ohio Democrats haven’t proven they can win statewide without robust turnout in Cleveland. And barring an unexpected reversal of depressing trends in that arena, chipping away at the rural margins becomes that much more important.
The days of winning rural counties are probably over for Ohio Democrats.
This cycle, however, offers the greatest opportunity of my lifetime to make inroads into rural Ohio.
The Republican Party is tied to an unpopular president whose incompetence has led to runaway inflation (the issue he was ostensibly re-elected to fix) and America’s third disastrous foreign war in nearly 30 years.
Though Ohio voted for Donald Trump three times, he’s not on the ballot in November. And despite all his flaws, nobody makes the hogs stomp the floor harder than President Business Deals.
Worse for Ohio Republicans, their party coronated the notorious conman Vivek Ramaswamy, whose favorability is still underwater despite spending millions of dollars on ad campaigns.
This would be a troublesome scenario for the Republicans in any election. But Ohio is also ground zero for corporate colonization. Residents from Piqua to Grove City organizing against data centers coming to their neighborhood.
From Gallup in May:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor.
Heatmap also found the same margin opposing data centers, noting a decisive swing that has occurred in the past nine months:
When Heatmap first asked Americans how they would feel about a nearby data center project last September, Americans were evenly split: 43% said they would support it, 42% were opposed, and 15% said they weren’t sure.
[…]
Now, 55% of Americans — an absolute majority — “strongly” oppose a data center project built near where they live, and an additional 16% are “somewhat” opposed. Only 21% of Americans would support a new nearby data center. The public has swung 49 points against data centers in just nine months, underscoring the heightened political salience of the facilities and the AI industry that they embody.
Last week, Fox News released a poll that showed opposition to data centers cut across party lines.
By more than 2-to-1, Buckeye voters oppose having an AI data center built in their area (32% favor, 65% oppose). That opposition is across the political spectrum, as majorities of Democrats (72%), independents (64%), and Republicans (59%) are against building data centers.
Opposing data centers is good politics by any measure.
Ramaswamy cannot speak meaningfully against data centers; he is a prostitute, albeit a high-class one, for Big Tech and the “Silicon Heartland” pipe dream. He is also heavily invested in the same companies colonizing Ohio with environment-ravaging, energy-sucking behemoths that don’t pay any meaningful taxes.
His party is the one that allowed the problem to fester in the first place.
And it’s all little more than the latest scam by Big Tech, as laid bare by my friend Carl Setzer of the MidwesTurn podcast, moments after he taped my arrest at the Statehouse last Monday.
It’s testimony worth watching in full, if you can spare 510 seconds in your day:
Opposing data centers allows Democrats to stand tall against the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and other lesser-known villains—along with private equity.
It’s the cross-through on everything from wealth inequality, to corporate greed, to unchecked oligarchs trying to circumvent every level of our government and install themselves as the permanent ruling class.
Dr. Amy Acton’s campaign, in typical consultant fashion, seems intent on triangulating the issue, given her support from the building trades. She’s said she will “take steps to ensure” data centers will “pay their own costs,” without clarifying how she will do that while facing healthy Republican majorities in both legislative chambers at best.
As The Rooster explained in April, the building trades—God bless them—haven’t been reliable coalition partners. The Allied Construction Trades endorsed Ramaswamy, and even the ones that have endorsed Acton can’t deliver most of their members to the ballot box for Democrats.
The trades look at data centers like liquid gold. But the dirty secret is that they import thousands of workers from outside Ohio to plug the labor gap. And we love that for our out-of-state tradesmen.
But here in Ohio, but we’re in the fourth quarter, down 10, and the Republicans seem intent on electing a billionaire con artist who’s only running for governor as a profit-seeking venture.
It’s a fool’s try to find a third rail on this issue in this era.
Dr. Acton should take a page from Setzer’s book and speak with easy-to-understand moral clarity on an issue that defines the golden epoch of scamming in which we live.
Anything short of a full moratorium will squander a generational opportunity at making inroads among rural voters.
Dr. Acton is currently tied with Ramaswamy, one of the most repulsive and unqualified figures to ever stumble out of Republican Central Casting in recent memory.
She will come to rue her deference to trade unions on a salient issue if she loses within the margin of error.
There’s still time to change course. But she should start now, before Ramaswamy’s team unleashes millions of dollars on advertising campaigns painting her as a drunken, pill-addicted philanderer who drank goblets of children’s blood with Dr. Fauci.
What the hell was the notorious conman doing last month, other than getting rejected from the New York Knicks security zone?
