How AI and data centers are dominating New York’s key midterm races

New York GOP candidates are blazing forward with a pro-tech, pro-business message in the state’s marquee November races while Democrats try to weaponize a surge in public outrage against data centers and AI.

Dem Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is clamoring to hold onto her 10-point lead in her reelection bid against Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, recently fired a major salvo in the anti-data-center war by implementing a one-year statewide moratorium on new sites in the Empire State, even as demand for the facilities soars with the takeoff of AI.

“This is a reaction to the anxiety we’re hearing around this,” Hochul recently claimed.

“The bottom line is progress shouldn’t arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply or noise pollution. So we have no choice but to address these challenges created by these massive facilities,” she said.

High-profile congressional Democrats such as Cait Conley, who is trying to knock out GOP Hudson Valley incumbent Rep. Mike Lawler, are honing in on the issue. too.

“Right now, where we’re just letting corporations literally pass costs off to our communities and extort benefit, that’s not the right answer,” she said at a forum hosted by the Dutchess County Chamber of Commerce last month.

“And as we’ve learned with social-media companies, they’re not going to do the right thing themselves,” said Conley, calling for more control over data center development when asked about the issue.

A Siena University poll released last month shows only 29% of likely New York voters have a favorable opinion of AI compared with 52% unfavorable.

Younger voters between ages 18 and 35 are decidedly against the tech, with only 23% telling Siena they view it favorably, compared with a massive 71% who consider it unfavorable.

But Blakeman, railing against Hochul’s moratorium, has said such opposition is just another example of Democrats’ anti-business sentiments.

“To bury your head in the sand, with the fastest growing industry in the world, again, this is the reason why we’re 50th in economic development,” he said.

“This is the reason young people are moving out of our estate to places where there’s more economic opportunity.”

But Blakeman, and other GOP reps aren’t blind to voters’ anxieties, either.

He said the state needs to institute controls over energy usage and that local governments should exert power to extract public benefits from any new developments.

“We do not want AI to go offshore. We do want AI companies to be operating out of China, certainly not American companies,” Lawler pointed out at the Duchess County forum last month.

“So we need to have a all-of-government approach to this. The federal government, state governments and local municipalities need to be working together collaboratively to address the concerns, to make sure that these large-scale data centers are not taking away power from the people,” he said.

Josh Vlasto, one of the operatives heading Leading the Future, a super PAC supported by AI-firms, said he thinks anti-tech sentiments are being overblown.

“What you’re seeing on the data center debate, what you’re seeing around AI, what we had previously seen on crypto, are really extreme voices trying to derail progress on policy,” Vlasto said.

“The American public just wants to harness the benefits of AI and have a smart policy to mitigate the downsides and the risks. To us, it’s not that complicated,” he said.