Published: 18:04 BST, 19 August 2026 | Updated: 19:55 BST, 19 August 2026
As angst over AI data centers consumes Ohio, Democrats are making an obvious and effective election play: blaming Republicans.
A memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, obtained first by Axios, warns that growing public hostility toward massive data centers could threaten Senator Jon Husted's reelection campaign.
The stakes are unusually high. The Ohio Senate race between Husted and former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is one of the country's most closely watched Senate contests and could have implications for control of the chamber.
A new Fox poll shows Brown maintaining an eight-point lead over Husted in the race for Ohio’s Senate seat, 53% to 45% — a margin unchanged since June.
Republicans currently hold a narrow Senate majority, making competitive races like Ohio's especially important.
The memo describes data centers as a growing political liability and warns that a Husted defeat could send a message to politicians and the technology industry nationwide.
'If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice — and they will not go near the next one,' the memo says. 'This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.'
Husted's Democratic challenger, former Senator Sherrod Brown, has made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign, allegedly spending millions of dollars on advertising portraying Husted as 'the face of data centers in Ohio.'
There's a reason Brown has been able to attach Husted so closely to the industry.
In July, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, legislation designed to establish standards ensuring that large electricity users such as data centers pay for the additional generation, transmission and grid infrastructure needed to serve them
In 2015, while serving in the Senate, Brown praised the construction of a third data center in central Ohio, calling the Amazon project 'great news for New Albany and central Ohio'
The industry has attracted major companies including Meta, Vantage and QTS, while Nvidia and OpenAI have announced major projects in Ohio
As Ohio's lieutenant governor, Husted was a prominent public champion of the state's effort to attract technology companies. Ohio has more than 200 data centers, making it the fifth-highest state in the country for the number of data centers.
In 2019, he appeared at the groundbreaking of Google's $600 million data center in New Albany and touted the project as evidence that Columbus could become the 'tech hub of the Midwest.'