Lawmakers in Washington often insist data centers, which require thousands of acres and enormous amounts of energy, are a municipal issue. But residents organizing against their construction say candidates up and down the ballot will have to answer for their concerns — especially if those politicians are going to campaign on affordability.
“This absolutely plays into affordability,” said Christine Le Jeune, a founding organizer of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Wisconsin. “People are concerned about rapidly rising energy prices.”
Le Jeune’s group launched a petition to recall the mayor of Port Washington, a Wisconsin town on Lake Michigan where construction began last month on a $15 billion data center to service OpenAI and Oracle through the Stargate project backed by President Donald Trump.