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Will Lawrence Is Upending Conventional Wisdom on How to Win Congressional Districts by David Dayen
Lurking in the background of the midterms is a potential political realignment sparked by protests over data centers. Wall Street is resetting its forecasts for AI valuations and capital expenditures because of local data center opposition, from the Virginia suburbs to the Utah plains. And it’s bleeding into the political arena. Some officials have already lost their elections over approving data center construction or even for failing to stop it, and more are threatened in the fall. When Greg Abbott—that Greg Abbott—is making proposals for stronger regulations, you know that the data center issue just hits different.
But among several candidates who have talked to me about the increasingly pivotal role data centers are playing in their elections, nobody had quite articulated the meaning behind the grassroots pushback until I heard from Will Lawrence, a progressive running for Congress in Michigan’s Seventh Congressional District, a swing seat in the Lansing area.
Lawrence, a former climate and affordable-housing organizer, said that data centers were the most salient issue in his district, or at least the one with the most intensity of opinion. And he acknowledged the basic quality-of-life issues involved, like the impact on energy and water bills, noise pollution, and bright lights at all hours. But, he added, there was something more.
“It’s also about who decides the future of our communities,” he said in an interview. “We have the richest companies in the world coming in, signing elected officials into nondisclosure agreements, with PR agents and lawyers telling everybody how good of a deal it’s going to be … They say, ‘This is the way of progress. And you need to engage in shared sacrifice for the common good.’ And we say, ‘What common good? The benefits of the development have gone to the one percent!’”[/excerp]
https://prospect.org/2026/07/01/will-lawrence-lansing-michigan-seventh-congressional-district-data-centers-iran-war/]
But among several candidates who have talked to me about the increasingly pivotal role data centers are playing in their elections, nobody had quite articulated the meaning behind the grassroots pushback until I heard from Will Lawrence, a progressive running for Congress in Michigan’s Seventh Congressional District, a swing seat in the Lansing area.
Lawrence, a former climate and affordable-housing organizer, said that data centers were the most salient issue in his district, or at least the one with the most intensity of opinion. And he acknowledged the basic quality-of-life issues involved, like the impact on energy and water bills, noise pollution, and bright lights at all hours. But, he added, there was something more.
“It’s also about who decides the future of our communities,” he said in an interview. “We have the richest companies in the world coming in, signing elected officials into nondisclosure agreements, with PR agents and lawyers telling everybody how good of a deal it’s going to be … They say, ‘This is the way of progress. And you need to engage in shared sacrifice for the common good.’ And we say, ‘What common good? The benefits of the development have gone to the one percent!’”[/excerp]
https://prospect.org/2026/07/01/will-lawrence-lansing-michigan-seventh-congressional-district-data-centers-iran-war/]
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