Virginia lawmakers defending their House seats this fall face growing pressure to weigh in on the growth of data centers in a state with the highest concentration of them.
Concerns over energy affordability and water resources are mounting, and House candidates in Virginia who once punted the issue of data center construction to state governments and localities are being asked to take a clear stance on how to control their costs and environmental impact.
“Most things in America, you’re trying to build a new road, it takes six or eight years. Data centers are going up in a matter of months, and that’s freaking people out,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) told POLITICO.
Beyer said he previously thought data centers would have little influence over the midterms — the state has had them for decades — but he now sees data centers as a “growing concern among so many Americans.”
Voters’ worries have reverberated into Congress, as lawmakers from Virginia and beyond have spent the past year championing bills meant to assuage their constituents.
Beyer — who represents a solidly Democratic district and will almost certainly win reelection — recently urged the Fairfax County Planning Commission to reject a data center permit and has introduced legislation to address electricity prices.
Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.), who is running for reelection in Virginia’s competitive 7th District, introduced two data-center-related bills earlier this year and immediately nodded to voters.
“Electricity bills are out of control in Virginia, and I am fighting to bring your monthly bills down,” he said in a statement upon introducing the bills.
Shifting attitudes
Among 69 House districts expected to be competitive this November, nearly all already have at least one data center, and most have more on the way, according to a POLITICO analysis.
The issue has moved rapidly up the political food chain in the past few months, and holds special weight in the heavily Democratic northern Virginia, which hosts the highest concentration of data centers in the world. Vindman and Beyer represent districts there.
The share of Virginia voters who would be comfortable with construction of a new data center in their community dropped from 69 percent to 35 percent from 2023 to 2026, according to a Washington Post-Schar poll.
In 2026 alone, the share of American adults who oppose building a data center near their residence shot up from 28 percent in January to 41 percent in July, a POLITICO poll revealed.
In Virginia, Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval ratings slipped months after she took office, in part due to voters’ perceptions of her being soft on data centers, according to a July poll by Virginia Commonwealth University.
This shift is embodied in Vindman’s 7th District battleground. The area occupies part of Prince William County, where there are 39 operational data centers and dozens more on the way, and where two massive data center developments were recently shot down.
Vindman trod lightly on the issue when he won the seat in 2024, noting both the economic incentives and environmental downsides of the centers. His Republican opponent at the time likewise punted on the issue that election cycle.
Now Vindman is campaigning with a sharpened perspective more in line with voters’ concerns regarding affordability and pollution.
“I have been clear that data centers need to pay their fair share. Virginia should welcome innovation, but not at any cost,” Vindman said in a statement to POLITICO.
‘They wanted change’
The three Republican newcomers running to unseat Vindman — Philip Harding, Douglas Ollivant and Rick Smithers — all have hit the campaign trail with visions for tackling the issue and securing their party’s nomination in Tuesday’s primary.
Smithers wants a temporary moratorium on building more of the facilities, citing the lack of extensive studies around how data centers affect surrounding communities.
“We could just slow down a bit and do some more extensive studies to see how these data centers are going to affect the electrical grid, the water supply, the clean air that we breathe, farmlands,” he told POLITICO, positioning himself alongside the progressive likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
Ollivant’s campaign website has “energy” as his top issue and emphasizes that secure, affordable energy is required to meet the rapid rise of data centers. Meanwhile, Harding is sticking to the main message of empowering local leaders to make decisions.
“We have to be giving local leaders what they need to make the proper decisions,” Harding told POLITICO.
The data center debate has also become a point of contention in the Democratic primary in Virginia’s 1st District, where Democrats are looking to unseat Republican Rep. Rob Wittman.
Lawyer Salaam Bhatti is running social media ads that use his endorsement of a data center moratorium to distinguish himself from county prosecutor Shannon Taylor, who has a significant cash advantage ahead of this week’s Democratic primary.
It’s unclear the extent to which concerns about data centers will cause voters to cross party lines, but it’s played a factor in other races in the state. Prince William County board Chair Deshundra Jefferson says that she saw it on the local level in her own race.
Jefferson ran a successful data-center-conscious campaign in 2023 to unseat fellow Democrat Ann Wheeler from the board. On election day, a few Republican women took her literature on data centers and handed them out in other precincts, she said.
“In their mind, they wanted change, and they felt that I was the person who could best bring about change,” Jefferson said.
‘Grid is not local’
Kyle Kondik, elections analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics and managing editor of the political newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said that any candidate who runs a campaign against data centers is likely to profit from the issue, given their unpopularity with the general public.
Kondik sees a window for Democrats to strongly rebuke data centers to win over some Republican voters this November by appealing to people who have “lower social trust in big tech,” he said.
Darrell West, senior fellow at think tank Brookings Institution, agrees that the data center problem is largely a bipartisan one. Public polling indicates that Democrats are more opposed to them, but not by a huge margin, he said.
Virginia congressional candidates are focusing more on data centers this election cycle as people and groups opposing data centers in the region have become dissatisfied with the argument that data centers are local concerns; they want their federal candidates to show up and take a firm stance.
“The grid is not local. In fact, the grid is not even just Virginia,” Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, said. “If there’s a cascading blackout, that’s not happening just in the district where the data center was approved. … The utility bills, that’s everybody’s bill.”
The Data Center Coalition, the industry’s primary trade group, did not respond to requests for comment. The group is headquartered in northern Virginia and has pushed back on claims the facilities are causing energy prices to rise.
Vindman has sponsored two bills aimed at curbing rate hikes by electric utilities: the Home Energy Affordability Act, H.R. 8948, and the Utility Hikes Transparency Act, H.R. 8947. The first seeks to limit the ability of utilities to request rate hikes. The second would create a database of utility rate changes. Neither has gained much traction.
He introduced a third bill Monday directing the Department of Commerce to study the costs and benefits of siting data centers in industrial zones rather than near residential communities and schools.
H.R. 6529, from Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and Beyer, would require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to conference with utilities and technology companies on the impacts of data centers on consumers’ electricity costs. The bill cleared committee in June as FERC itself moves forward with addressing data center energy demand.
Democratic Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, who is largely expected to coast to reelection in Virginia’s 10th District, has also introduced legislation, H.R. 9372, to standardize how the government studies data centers and their energy and water use. It passed out of committee in June.
Subramanyam has been vocal in hearings about the need to curb the high energy bills associated with data centers, though he has stopped short of endorsing a nationwide moratorium.
The biggest bill making its way through Congress on data center energy use is the Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340, which would have states consider a federal standard to make sure people aren’t footing the bill for artificial intelligence infrastructure expansion. It’s headed to the House floor after recess, but its outlook in the Senate remains murky.
