Amid signs that the Ohio Republican senator Jon Husted's support for the AI datacenters Donald Trump touts at every opportunity could cost him his seat, and imperil the Republican majority in the Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has reportedly warned leading AI companies that they need to arrest the public backlash to the massive warehouses springing up across the state. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
Husted trailed his Democratic challenger, former senator Sherrod Brown, by eight percentage points in a recent poll for Fox News, and the Republican campaign arm suggested in a memo obtained by Axios and then the Washington Post that Brown is successfully channeling grassroots outrage over the noisy, energy-sucking centers.
"More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted's neck," the NRSC wrote. "If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice – and they will not go near the next one."
"This has become a sleeper issue for the entire election cycle," the campaign committee added.
A recent ad from Brown's campaign blames Husted for encouraging the rapid expansion of datacenters in Ohio.
Charlie Blaettler, political director of the Guardrails Alliance, a Democratic Super PAC formed to combat "AI billionaire Trump donors trying to buy our elections and prevent common sense regulation", said in a statement that the memo proves that the Republican party "is panicking because they sold out to the AI industry – a while ago – and they know it".
Republicans, Blaettler said, "are realizing how wildly unpopular Big AI's agenda is with the American people. Now the GOP and AI's unaccountable billionaires are scrambling to backtrack and find a new way to pull the wool over the eyes of the public so they can get what they want: A Congress that will do their bidding and an AI future that benefits them, not the many." "It is time for the Democratic party to make it clear who they stand with", he added. "A handful of Big Tech billionaires or the majority of people in the country who want commonsense regulation for this unprecedented technology."
When he was asked by a Maga influencer about the public unease with AI datacenters on Wednesday, Trump argued they generate tax revenue and construction jobs, "and many of them are designed in a very beautiful way".