Aerial view of Google’s Midlothian, Texas, data centers
Republican candidates in competitive U.S. Senate races are being bankrolled by data center proponents.
Former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers has accepted $30,300 from the industry this cycle, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan has taken $98,300, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has received over $2 million.
These totals came from executives and employees at companies pushing to build more data centers. The contributions were made either directly to the candidate or a political action committee (PAC) supporting them.
Data centers provide the computing power needed to run artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The facilities have become controversial for their excessive use of electricity and water, which has contributed to rising utility costs.
A recent ABC News poll found that 66 percent of Americans oppose building more data centers in the United States, while 72 percent specifically oppose building data centers in their communities.
Candidates elected to the Senate this year will likely vote on legislation governing data center development and AI more broadly.
Rogers received $5,020 from Oracle employees and $4,000 from OpenAI employees. Both companies rank among the 20 largest data center developers in the United States. He also received $10,643 from Blackstone employees and $20,500 from Apollo Management employees, whose firms are heavily invested in data centers.
All of Sullivan’s contributions came from employees at Anthropic, another AI giant. They gave $14,000 to his primary campaign, $29,800 to his general election bid, $15,000 to Last Frontier, a super PAC supporting Sullivan, and $35,000 to True North PAC, which Sullivan runs.
Paxton’s contributions largely came from energy executives who build the infrastructure to support data centers. These include $50,000 from VoltaGrid CEO Nathan Ough and more than $2 million from former National Instruments CEO James Truchard.
Paxton collected another $100,000 from Florida-based energy investor Maxim Barskiy.
Reprinted with permission from American Journal News
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