Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley is clearly unnerved by a week’s worth of attacks on his support for data centers; so much so that it has elevated the issue to the forefront of the race.
Late last week, Republican nominee Tom Tiffany launched a tour of rural Wisconsin highlighting Crowley’s past comments about making the state the data center hub “not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe.” Crowley responded by focusing on his supposed toughness on data centers in his first TV ad of the general election.
“I’m laying out my vision for a Wisconsin that works for everyone,” he said in the spot. “Hold data centers accountable and make them pay, expand BadgerCare, lower costs and a lot more jobs.”
It is not an accident that targeting data centers was listed first (even before the standard liberal promise of expanding the welfare state). Crowley’s campaign knows just how unpopular data centers are in Wisconsin.
A TIPP poll released Friday shows just 15% of the state’s voters have a favorable view of data centers while 66% view them unfavorably. Notably, that number is pushed largely by 70% of Democrats and 71% of independents who disapprove of data center projects. 58% of Republicans hold an unfavorable view.
Tiffany has successfully staked out the populist position on the issue that has been galvanizing communities and motivating a groundswell of local activism against new construction. Crowley, meanwhile, has been buried by his own words.
“We already have some data centers here, right?” he told WTMJ Radio as recently as this month. “We see that WEDC [Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation], they fund a lot of tech opportunities here in Milwaukee and Madison and a little bit now in Green Bay. But how do we spread that wealth across the entire state?”
Unfortunately for him, the entire state doesn’t want them regardless of how much wealth he believes they will bring. The opposition to data centers in rural communities has not centered on the unhinged and thoroughly dishonest liberal fearmongering surrounding them. Very few actually believe that data centers will suck Lake Michigan dry or cause personal utility bills to skyrocket. Rather, they correctly surmise that a data center in their quaint little town will fundamentally and irrevocably alter its character.
Data centers don’t cause cancer (as some of the most unhinged and most dishonest liberal rhetoric suggests) but they do cause development. Data centers create jobs, and jobs bring people. People need homes and amenities, which tend to go up around them in decent-sized numbers. That generates a decent amount of revenue, yes, but it can also remove the quaintness from a quaint little town very quickly.
That quaintness is what residents love most about their hometowns, and any effort to remove that, especially without their consent, is unforgiveable. All politics is local, the old saying goes, and it doesn’t get more local—or personal—than this.
People are ultimately motivated to vote by whatever personally impacts them the most, and a foundational change in their hometown is about as impactful as it gets. When that change comes from elsewhere, they are understandably angry.
When that change comes from a Milwaukee politician who openly says big cities like his, Madison, and Green Bay have enough data centers, thank you very much, and eyes up the rest of the state as his own personal economic opportunity zone, voters there are understandably furious.
That’s why the “Data Center David” moniker is sticking: Because the rest of the state, already suspicious of Milwaukee politicians’ views of them and their communities, recognizes and is already rejecting his perceived effort to reap the benefits of state tax revenue from new data center construction while ensuring that it doesn’t impact the big Democrat cities he really cares about.
All politics, ultimately, is personal. And for the people in the communities Crowley views as his data farms, this is personal.
