Summary
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, was midway through defending her record during the final debate of the midterms when an audience member cut her short.
Maine’s data center revolt will decide who controls the Senate
As tech billionaires pour record millions into Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, rural voters push back against the resource strain, rising utility costs, and phantom jobs of the AI data center boom.
Maine’s data center revolt will decide who controls the Senate
As tech billionaires pour record millions into Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, rural voters push back against the resource strain, rising utility costs, and phantom jobs of the AI data center boom.
“I’m terrified,” a man shouted. “AI data centers are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our water.” Collins brushed off the outburst, tying the man to her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson. But the fear echoing through the auditorium wasn’t so easily dismissed. Just days before voters head to the polls, the rapid expansion of resource-hungry data centers has exploded into one of Maine’s most volatile campaign issues.
Maine drew national headlines in April when the state Legislature passed what would have been the nation’s first statewide moratorium on large data centers — had Gov. Janet Mills not vetoed the bill 10 days later. But the fight hasn’t slowed down, with towns across the state adopting temporary moratoriums or putting the question of data center expansion to voters this November. In a September poll of Mainers by UMass Lowell and YouGov, 76 percent of respondents said they oppose building a data center in their community, with 58 percent strongly opposed.
Maine’s hotly contested Senate race is set to be the most expensive Senate race per capita that the US has ever seen, with Democrats spending a projected 114 million. Much of that campaign cash has come from the very industry Mainers and rural voters across the country have been fighting for more than a year. The outcome of the race will help determine which party controls the Senate and help shape federal data center and AI policy, impacting data center construction not just for Maine residents, but for the entire country.
Cheap land, rich water
Maine and other rural states are becoming prime targets for new data centers. While cities run short on land and power, Maine has abundant cheap land, vacant industrial mills and buildings, and ample access to water, thanks to its numerous rivers and waterways. Recognizing the high stakes, major tech companies and private equity firms tied to data centers and AI have invested millions in the midterms to win over skeptical locals.
The issue has sparked fierce local debate, leading towns and cities across the state to enact temporary bans this summer.
Molly White, the researcher, writer, and software engineer behind Tech Influence Watch, says that voters are paying a lot of attention to the issue because they connect data centers to rising costs for utilities. As White points out, many Mainers are also already feeling the pinch due to record-high heating oil costs this fall, and “they’re now looking at an election where the question is, is this candidate going to invite a data center to move in next door, and then my electricity prices go up, or the knock-on effects are going to hurt me even more when I’m already in very dire straits?” she said.
White launched her site in 2024 to track crypto spending in political races, but has since expanded it to monitor AI and Big Tech investments. White says the playbook that AI and data center backers are using in the midterms is very similar to the one the cryptocurrency industry used in 2024.
“There’s a lot going on in this election,” White says, “but I do think it has been a big issue in Maine and across the country, where you’ll go to a political event, you’ll see people asking questions of candidates, and AI keeps coming up. Certainly there’s a lot of questions about the economy, the war, all these different things, but AI is the new one.”
“Certainly there’s a lot of questions about the economy, the war, all these different things, but AI is the new one.”
— Molly WhiteData center developers and their political allies often sell rural Maine communities on long-term job creation — a promise economists say rarely materializes. In reality, economic research indicates that most data centers create virtually no net employment once construction is complete.
Historically, Maine’s industry has centered around lumber and timber, shipbuilding, commercial fishing, textiles, and pulp and paper manufacturing. The timber industry contributed around 6.2 million in federal funding for a high-performance computing hub data center in central Maine, which is designed to bolster localized AI and biotech research. Her stance has brought in a tremendous amount of campaign donations from Big Tech, AI, and data center donors for her reelection bid.
Collins’ individual donors include Alex Karp, the cofounder and CEO of Palantir; Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, which heavily backs data centers; and others from Google, Meta, and Microsoft. According to White’s donation tracker, Collins has received 42 million into ads across Maine. Elon Musk gave 450 million of his own money to support Republicans in the midterms. Musk’s America PAC has spent around 29.1 million into the race to support her. Stephen Schwarzman from Blackstone has donated 55,000 to Collins’ Victory Committee in August and another [300,000 to 4 million to 147,000 to 54 million has been spent or committed for negative attack ads, and nearly all of it is coming from outside PACs financed by Big Tech and data center supporters, not the candidates’ campaigns. While no ads have focused specifically on Collins’ support for data centers and AI, some have targeted her ties to Big Tech, billionaires, and data centers through her husband. The National Republican Senatorial Committee tried to tie Troy Jackson to Senate Democrats’ opposition to the Husted legislation in September in a press release.
“That is where the overwhelming amount of money is going,” Jacobs says about the attack ads. “It’s ads, and then paying consultants to write the ads, polling, paying the consultants to do the polls, right? The worst case is that it tarnishes the image of democracy in voters’ minds, and I think that is the most significant consequence beyond any quid pro quo relationship.”
As Jacobs notes, many Maine voters, especially independents, are conflicted about data center investment in the state. They are deeply attached to their community and wary of outsiders changing it, while also worried their children won’t be able to afford to stay or find good jobs without the influx of tech money.
“I think many people throughout Maine worry about the future and whether or not their children will be able to afford to live there,” he says. “Whether there will be jobs. Both of these things are true … Data centers just seem to be this symbolic flashpoint of that tension in rural living.”