In the years since the exemptions went into effect, Wisconsin has become a major hub of data-center construction. More than forty-six billion dollars’ worth of data-center-development projects are currently under construction or being considered in the state, according to an estimate by the nonprofit newsroom Wisconsin Watch. Recently, a Seattle-based company called Cloverleaf Infrastructure has been drawing national attention as “A.I. prospectors” in Wisconsin—securing large plots of land from farmers and other landowners for tech companies. Its biggest success so far is facilitating the development of Oracle and OpenAI’s fifteen-billion-dollar data-center campus in Port Washington, a small town in southeastern Wisconsin. It will eventually cover nineteen hundred acres (much of it former farmland) and require 3.5 gigawatts of electricity—roughly three times the amount needed to power all residences in Milwaukee. Hyper-scale data centers often demand new natural-gas power plants and transmission lines, and Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission approves or denies permits for such developments, with no requirement for input from local communities. Recently, the commission predicted that the state’s power-generation needs will rise by forty per cent in the next six years, largely because of data centers.
Meanwhile, statewide opposition has surged. Seventy-eight per cent of Wisconsin’s residents now oppose data centers, according to an August poll from Marquette University Law School, up from fifty-five per cent this past October. And, crucially, opposition in both parties is growing, though it is much stronger—ninety-four per cent—among Democrats. “Republicans have become more opposed, but Democrats have become even more opposed,” Charles Franklin, the poll’s director, told me. The Marquette poll also showed similar levels of opposition across the state, even in places where there is no proposed development. There are no plans for data centers in the assembly district of Ben Gruber, a Democratic assembly candidate in southwestern Wisconsin, but he has found that the issue still resonates with voters. “Data centers are a physical target of an emotional, visceral populist anger,” Gruber told me. “Behind them is A.I. People aren’t sure what it’s gonna do for them. Is it going to improve their life, or is it going to take their job?” Gruber noted that five elementary schools in his area have closed in the past nine years. “What everybody is most upset about is the corporate welfare, while our communities suffer,” he said.
Since Tiffany’s attacks began, Crowley has moved in Hong’s general direction, emphasizing his requirements—using exclusively renewable energy to power new data centers, building them with union labor—for developers to receive the tax breaks. But he has stopped short of calling for repealing those exemptions, giving Tiffany an opening to try and gain a populist edge on the issue. Last week, Tiffany, who grew up on a dairy farm, embarked on a tour called “Protecting Wisconsin Farmland,” continuing to cultivate his image as a folksy, rural Wisconsinite devoted to beloved institutions like the family farm and the tavern. (One treacly campaign sign reads “You Betcha! Tom Tiffany for Governor.”) His data-center-focussed attack ads emphasize that message. “Our lakes run dry. Family farms paved over. Why? Because Crowley’s campaign is funded by the people building them,” it goes. “Big Tech wins. Wisconsin pays.”
This line of attack is especially performative, considering that, as recently as earlier this year, Tiffany had been a strong supporter of data centers. In January, he called them an “exciting new technology,” and, last year, in Congress, he voted for a version of the “Big Beautiful Bill” which imposed a ten-year ban on state and local regulations of A.I. (That provision was later removed by the Senate.) The bill that passed has, so far, given six A.I.-invested companies nearly eighty-three billion dollars in tax breaks. In fact, Tiffany’s record shows little concern for protecting natural resources and local control, or for restraining corporate power. In 2011, when Tiffany was a member of the State Assembly, he introduced a bill to expedite the permitting of an enormous open-pit iron-ore mine near Lake Superior, in one of the most pristine watersheds in the state. In 2013, as a state senator, he co-authored a bill that barred local municipalities from regulating the mining of frac sand, which is used in fracking and can cause silicosis, an incurable lung disease. In 2017, he led the successful effort to repeal Wisconsin’s moratorium on sulfide mining, and also that year he voted to give the Taiwanese company Foxconn billions of dollars in subsidies to build a massive LCD screen factory, a deal that several Wisconsinites described to me as an important precedent that fuelled their distrust of data centers. The deal, negotiated by President Trump and Governor Scott Walker (Trump called it the “eighth wonder of the world”), reached 4.5 billion dollars—the largest subsidy of a foreign corporation in American history and quickly became a boondoggle. Foxconn had promised to open a manufacturing plant that would employ thirteen thousand workers. To build the campus, hundreds of acres of Wisconsin farmland were cleared and dozens of homeowners sold their properties after being threatened with having them taken under eminent domain. Foxconn never employed more than about a thousand people and eventually part of the land was sold to Microsoft, which is planning to build seventeen data centers on the site.
