Milwaukee County Executive and Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley wants data centers powered by 100% renewable energy. That means more large-scale solar farms blanketing productive Wisconsin farmland. Meanwhile, under the progressive leadership Crowley represents, large properties across Milwaukee sit vacant, underused, or recently cleared, and even a modest data center proposal within the city itself was quietly removed from the planning process. It’s easy for Milwaukee leaders to look at ’empty’ farmland and make data centers the problem for some rural communities, at the expense of economic development in their blighted backyards.
Crowley is attempting to position himself as the candidate of “guardrails.” Data centers can come, he says, but only if they “bring your own clean energy,” cover every penny of infrastructure and grid upgrades, and are built with union labor that donates and campaigns for Crowley. He has spoken of Wisconsin becoming an AI and data hub for the country, or even the globe, so long as the projects meet his green conditions and are built only by labor unions who support him. Republican Tom Tiffany has rightly labeled him “Data Center David” and pointed out the obvious consequence: requiring 100% renewables for these power-hungry facilities accelerates the conversion of farmland into solar arrays. Tiffany notes that offsetting just the major projects already in the pipeline would demand tens of thousands of acres. Crowley’s own rhetoric about protecting land and water collides with the land-use reality his green energy mandate creates.
Look at what is happening in the city Crowley has helped lead. The 58-acre former Northridge Mall site on Milwaukee’s northwest side was finally demolished after years of blight. The city now controls a large, cleared parcel in a lower-income area and is soliciting ideas for sports, health care, advanced manufacturing, or housing. Yet it remains empty. Commercial corridors on the north side have lost grocery stores, pharmacies, and retailers; vacant retail shells and parking lots are common. Downtown office towers sit underused enough that the city is subsidizing conversions to apartments. Milwaukee Public Schools continues to operate far more buildings than enrollment supports, with multiple underutilized or aging facilities that consultants have flagged for closure or consolidation.
Even when a data-center use was proposed inside city limits, it was blocked. A redevelopment plan for the long-vacant former Walmart at the Midtown Center (near 60th Street and Capitol Drive) included a roughly 19,000-square-foot data-processing and computer-research facility, along with self-storage and a library branch. Neighborhood opposition was intense. The data-center component was removed from the plans and pulled from the City Plan Commission process. Alderman Mark Chambers Jr. confirmed the computing facility was dropped so the project could move forward with housing, the library, and storage instead. A small urban proposal was sidelined by local pushback and city processes controlled by progressive leadership. Yet the same political ecosystem is content to condition and enable far larger hyperscale projects—and the solar farms needed to “green” them—on rural farmland.
If the priority is responsible development, protecting natural resources, and avoiding unnecessary land conversion, why is the default solution to industrialize rural farmland for solar while Milwaukee’s inventory of empty commercial and institutional sites languishes, and while even a limited data-center proposal inside the city gets removed from the agenda? The answer is political convenience. Urban sites in Crowley territory face higher crime, higher taxes, denser regulation, and vocal neighborhood opposition that progressive leaders actually have to answer to. Rural and exurban sites in conservative communities offer cheaper land, easier transmission interconnections, and willing sellers—places where Milwaukee County politicians can push the projects without personal political risk or genuine concern for the voters who live there. Crowley’s renewable mandate shifts more of that demand onto rural communities he will happily neglect once the cameras leave.
This is the progressive pattern: export the externalities. City and county leaders talk equity and environmental justice while the physical footprint of their preferred energy and tech policies falls on farmers and small towns. They celebrate “clean energy” that requires vast acreage, then act surprised when rural residents object to the loss of scenic views, productive soil, the industrialization of agricultural landscapes, and a community’s rural character. At the same time, the leftist urban political class has presided over commercial disinvestment, retail flight, underused public buildings, and the quiet removal of even modest data-center plans inside Milwaukee. High property taxes, crime that drives businesses out, and a regulatory climate that prioritizes process over results help keep those urban sites empty.
Property rights matter. Rural landowners should be free to sell to data-center or solar developers if the price is right. Ratepayers should not subsidize Big Tech’s power bill. Local communities should retain real authority. None of that excuses Crowley’s selective moralizing. His plan effectively greenlights the bulldozing of productive farmland for solar arrays to power data centers, while the large, empty tracts and buildings in Milwaukee County, under his own progressive watch, continue to lie blighted, generating neither jobs nor a tax base. That is not stewardship. It is political convenience dressed up as principle. If Crowley were serious about protecting Wisconsin’s land and delivering economic opportunity, he would start by fixing the vacant properties in the county he already runs. Until he does, his farmland lectures are empty.
