"A growth engine for the economy is becoming a political albatross. Can messaging change that?"
"Tech companies and lobbyists are investing millions of dollars to tackle a new political problem for the industry: Data centers, the lifeblood of the growing artificial intelligence economy, are becoming toxic with voters.
Alarmed by elections that candidates won by campaigning against new data centers, the industry is taking out ads and funding campaigns to flip the narrative and put data centers in a positive light — spinning them as job creators and economic drivers rather than resource-hungry land hogs.
The new campaigns mark a sharp change for an industry that has long relied on tech’s image as an engine of growth and development. They signal how concerned the tech sector is becoming about data centers in the 2026 midterm elections.
A new AI trade group is distributing talking points to members of Congress and organizing local data center field trips to better pitch voters on their value. Another trade association, the Data Center Coalition (DCC), nearly tripled its lobbying spend in the third quarter of this year from the previous quarter, according to U.S. lobbying disclosures."
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