Just 10 months ago, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) celebrated Google’s planned $40 billion investment in Texas by calling the state the “epicenter of AI development.”
“We must ensure that America remains at the forefront of the AI revolution, and Texas is the place where that can happen,” Abbott said.
Oh, how times have changed.
On Monday, Abbott — facing a stronger-than-expected reelection challenge from Democrat Gina Hinojosa and a growing bipartisan backlash to data centers — directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to “halt all permits sought by data centers until the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) completes its audit.”
It was an about-face on one of the midterm’s most defining issues, something that has fired up not only Abbott’s opponents on the left, but voters who have backed him for years.
Take this finding from an NBC News poll released this week: After the outlet tested 15 different political characteristics to “see whether they would make voters more or less likely to vote for a candidate in November,” the pollsters found 64 percent of registered voters said they would be less likely to support a candidate who supported “building a data center in your community,” the strongest reaction of any characteristic.
“We don’t see many things in a cycle that have 64% [saying] I’m less likely to vote for somebody who supports that,” said Bill McInturff, the Republican pollster who co-produced the poll for NBC.
This shift from the Texas governor is not a one-off, either. Abbott, seemingly realizing that being pro-data center and on the ballot this November was a recipe for disaster, has made questioning data centers central to his pitch to voters, despite his position less than a year ago.
In June, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to require all data centers to “pay for all of their electric infrastructure costs to ensure that no residential ratepayer is burdened by those costs.”
Later that month, the Texas governor said the state must prohibit technology companies from building AI data centers in rural Texas neighborhoods. He touted his anti-data center work as “fighting for East Texas values,” and said his administration was “pushing back against these AI data centers that are trying to build in our neighborhoods.”
And in August, he ordered the same Texas commissions to audit all data center projects in the state.
“Our top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life,” said Abbott.
One reason for Abbott’s flip is that Hinojosa has used data centers to lambast the governor on the campaign trail.
She has run ads on the topic, hitting Abbott for accepting over $20 million in campaign donations tied to data center executives.
She has attacked Abbott personally on the issue. “Greg Abbott has no credibility when it comes to reining in the data centers,” Hinojosa said. “The reason why they’re all here is because he invited them in with some of the richest tax breaks in this country.”
And she demanded the governor call an emergency special legislative session on data centers.
She is not the only Democrat hitting Abbott on the issue either.
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, running for reelection in a competitive South Texas seat, told my colleague Jack Herrera that Abbott is the “biggest flip-flopper in America” because of his shift on data centers.
“He brags about them, and now he’s against them, because they’ve become really unpopular,” Gonzalez (D) said in Corpus Christi, a city that has been the subject of reports of towns running out of drinking water, in part, because of data centers.
Eduardo Leal, press secretary for Abbott’s campaign, responded to questions on Abbott’s shift on the issue by saying, “As the size and scope of data centers grew, Governor Abbott took decisive action to establish clear guardrails that put Texans first.”
Hinojosa remains a long shot. The last time the state elected a statewide Democrat was 1994. But the national environment is giving Democrats considerable momentum, and polls show a tight race in Abbott’s bid for a fourth term as governor.
My colleague Molly Hennessy-Fiske has done some outstanding coverage on Texas and data centers all year, including this piece from rural Centerville that found longtime Republican voters who support free markets, the energy industry and small government are “setting aside those principles to battle an onslaught of data center projects that pro-business GOP leaders initially welcomed.”
“The opposition to data centers is across party lines, across demographics,” Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist and CEO of The Alliance for Secure AI, told Molly. And when it comes to the midterms, Steinhauser said, “I don’t think those voters have made up their minds.”
Molly has also found that data centers have become a way for Democrats in Texas to make the election about class, affordability and working people.
“The discontent with data centers is being mobilized in service of an argument — in a campaign sense — that says the leaders of this state have been choosing the rich and tech over average Texans,” James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, told her.
Whether Hinojosa can pull off the nearly unthinkable and win in Texas is an open question. But if the Democrat does, it will likely be, in part, because of data centers.