Data centers front and center in Ohio Senate race

A stretch of federal land in southeastern Ohio is about to hold one of the largest data center projects in the world, and the debate surrounding the facility has come to dominate Ohio's battleground Senate race. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, is defending his seat against former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who represented Ohio in the Senate from 2007 to 2025. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the matchup a toss up, and it has quickly become one of the most watched races of the midterm election season. Ohio's Senate seat will be key to determining which party controls the chamber during the final two years of President Donald Trump's term in the White House. With a slim 6-seat voting advantage by Republicans, Brown's candidacy is central to Democrats' hopes of flipping the Senate in their favor. Husted has held the seat since 2025, when Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to fill Vice President JD Vance's seat. Brown is chasing a comeback after losing Ohio's other Senate seat to Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, in 2024. Data centers have emerged as a defining issue for voters across the country in the 2026 midterm cycle. The debate in Ohio ramped up when OpenAI signed on to a project in Pike County, partnering with S.B. Energy, NVIDIA and the U.S. Department of Energy to build a multibillion-dollar site. The project could bring 35,000 new jobs to Ohio through 2032 and $120 million in community investment. It will also draw 8 gigawatts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of eight large power plants. Husted and Brown both say tech companies should pay for the power their data centers use, instead of passing those costs on to households. Neither candidate has called for the kind of construction moratorium New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced earlier this year. What the candidates clash over, however, is who is responsible for the data center projects already underway and whether Ohio should keep paying to attract more companies. In July, Husted introduced a bill to require state utility regulators to consider standards making the largest power users cover the costs of the plants, transmission lines and substations built to serve them. The standards could also require companies to provide financial assurances so families aren't left footing the bill if a project is delayed, downsized or abandoned. "Working families, small businesses and senior citizens should not open up their electric bills and discover the pain for the power infrastructure needed by some large tech company," Husted said on the Senate floor. While the bill passed the House 417-3 earlier this month, it stalled in the Senate after Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-New Mexico, objected to Husted's request to pass it by unanimous consent. Trump has embraced the issue of data centers since returning to the White House last year, pushing for rapid construction of facilities to remain ahead of competitors like China. Husted has taken a more cautious approach to the issue, arguing that decisions should remain in the hands of local communities. "This should be a local decision. Local elected officials [and] local citizens should decide whether they want a data center or not," Husted said on CBS's Face the Nation. "No one in Washington should be telling them that they need one or they can't have one." Brown's campaign has utilized TV ads to push for an end to the tax breaks Ohio uses to court tech companies. He has run at least eight ads on the issue, according to ad-tracking firm AdImpact, while Husted has aired none. "These out-of-state corporations have come in," Brown said in an interview with NBC. "Local communities had no say over this, taking their land, swallowing up their water, and then they have to pay more in electric bills." One of Brown's ads features an Ohio man who opposes Google's data center in Lancaster. "No one asked for that data center to be built here. And no one here is getting a damn thing from it, except higher electric bills," he says. Brown's ad accuses Husted of leading "the push to bring data centers to Ohio" and giving away "billions of tax dollars to make it happen." As Ohio's lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025, Husted defended tax breaks for Google's New Albany facility. According to the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, data centers in Ohio collected $2.5 billion in state and local tax breaks between 2017 and 2024. Brown has supported data centers in the past. In 2015, Brown called a Licking County data center "great news" for central Ohio and secured $2.8 million in 2010 for a Dayton research center working on data center cooling technology. Brown holds a significant fundraising edge over Husted, having raised more than double that of his opponent. Brown reported $38.6 million in funds in his latest Federal Election Commission filings, while Husted reported $14.4 million. As of June 30, Brown still had $16.2 million on hand and Husted $9.4 million. Voters will head to the polls for the midterm elections on Nov. 3. Polls in Ohio are open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.