The Anti-Data-Center Movement Is Reshaping Michigan Politics
Key takeaways
- Lawrence’s campaign sees data centers as a potent topic to rally voters to his side in the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 7th district, to be held in August.
- Data centers “certainly [weren’t] the issue I expected to be talking about on the campaign,” Lawrence tells WIRED.
- “People feel like they’re being utterly disrespected by the companies and the local officials who are welcoming them into town,” he says.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Photograph: Jim West/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Will Lawrence is one of the founders of the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots climate activism group. Now, he’s running for Congress in a Michigan swing district, one of a growing handful of candidates around the country calling for a moratorium on data center development.
Senator Bernie Sanders has endorsed him, calling Lawrence a candidate who will “demand real accountability for big tech and AI companies.” And the backlash to data centers, Lawrence says, is helping him understand rural resistance to another kind of large-scale industrial project in the state: utility-scale renewable energy.
Lawrence’s campaign sees data centers as a potent topic to rally voters to his side in the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 7th district, to be held in August. Internal polling conducted by Data for Progress of likely Democratic primary voters in the district shared with WIRED shows that more than 40 percent of respondents were “much more likely” to vote for a candidate who opposed data centers. The message resonated even more with respondents under 45: Almost 80 percent of younger voters said they’d be much more likely or more likely to support an anti-data-center candidate. (The 7th district includes the college town of Ingham.)