Data centers are giant warehouses full of computers that run AI. They use enormous amounts of electricity and enormous amounts of water, and somebody has to pay to build the power plants and power lines that feed them.

That somebody is usually you, on your electric bill.

A year ago the country was split on them — 42% of Americans opposed one in their area and 43% supported it. A poll released on August 20 by Embold Research and published by Heatmap Pro found that 75% now oppose one, with 61% strongly opposed.

That is one of the fastest collapses in public support for anything in recent memory. And it has left a lot of Republicans holding a position they took when it was popular and profitable.

Here are eight of them. Every one has spent the past year or two helping the build-out along, taking money from the companies and utilities that profit from it, or both. Five have spent the past few weeks sounding a lot more worried about it. Three are still arguing the industry's side.

Jon Husted took $69,750 from the companies on the other side of the fight

The Ohio senator introduced something called the Ratepayer Protection Act in July and put out a press release about protecting your electric bill.

What wasn't in the press release: his campaign has taken about $69,750 from the very industry that bill is supposed to rein in — $16,000 from the corporate PACs of Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, $28,750 from employees and executives of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle, and $25,000 from the PACs of American Electric Power, Duke Energy and Vistra. AEP's Ohio utility serves the central Ohio corridor where much of the state's data center construction has concentrated.

His own party has noticed. A leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee memo this month called data centers an "anchor" around his campaign, and asked the AI industry to please fix its image.

Mike Rogers (MI) called for a moratorium days after a reporter listed what he owns

Michigan's Republican Senate nominee endorsed Trump's national AI plan in March and told reporters he wanted to make permitting easier for AI companies.

Then The Lever went through his financial disclosure and found he holds $1.7 million to $2.6 million in companies positioned to profit from the AI build-out — including a Blackstone real estate trust that has been rapidly buying into data centers. Blackstone is helping build a $16 billion data center near Ann Arbor.

Days later, he announced he supports a one-year moratorium on new data centers in Michigan. His campaign would not say whether he intends to sell any of it.

Tom Barrett is running on a vote from 2015

Barrett's new ad has him at a bar warning about politicians "cozying up with Big Tech billionaires to force data centers on our communities."

The vote he cites as proof he stood up to his own party is from 2015, on a statewide sales tax break for data center equipment — eleven years before any of this. Since arriving in Congress he voted for the budget bill that handed six AI-linked companies $83 billion in tax breaks, voted for a version containing a ten-year ban on states regulating AI at all, and backed a bill weakening environmental reviews.

Elon Musk's super PAC spent more than $869,000 in his district. Peter Thiel and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman have both given him the maximum.

Stacy Garrity accused someone else of a "massive flip-flop"

Pennsylvania's Republican candidate for governor says Josh Shapiro "was the biggest cheerleader of data center development in Pennsylvania until he wasn't." She called it "a huge, massive flip-flop, and nobody should be fooled."

Her own record, in order: she called Amazon's $20 billion Pennsylvania investment "great news," told a Pittsburgh radio show "we need to deregulate," complained that "Ohio is kicking our butt. They have over 192" data centers to Pennsylvania's 88 — and now wants a pause she struggles to define.

She isn't alone in her delegation. All ten of Pennsylvania's Republicans in the U.S. House voted for the ten-year ban on states writing their own AI rules.

Marsha Blackburn said data centers were "good and important." Then $100,000 arrived.

On June 13, Tennessee's Republican candidate for governor posted a video: "Let me be direct, data centers are going to be a good and important part of Tennessee's economic growth, but we've got to be thoughtful about their placement."

Weeks later her campaign reported more than $100,000 from employees of AI and data-center companies — including about $53,000 from Anthropic employees in a matter of days and more than $50,000 from Oracle employees, one of them a top executive. Many of the donors don't live in Tennessee. Neither of her two Republican primary opponents got a dollar of the Oracle or Anthropic money.

Her campaign's answer, when asked about the money, was that Blackburn "has led the fight to hold Big Tech accountable."

Tom Tiffany wants to end data center subsidies. The coalition's lobbyist gave him $5,000.

Wisconsin voters do not like data centers — 76% said in July that the costs outweigh the benefits, up from 55% last October.

So Tiffany, running for governor, has spent weeks clipping his opponent's data center comments. Meanwhile his campaign took $5,000 from Robert Marchant, the only registered lobbyist for the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition. Tiffany says he wants to ban data center non-disclosure agreements and end their sales tax break. The coalition his donor lobbies for fought both.

Mike Lawler's district blocked one. Nine days later he went on TV to blame the rules.

On July 8, the planning board in Orangetown — in Lawler's own Hudson Valley district — voted unanimously to require a full environmental impact study of a data center expansion sitting near Lake Tappan, a drinking water reservoir — which halts the project indefinitely. More than 100 residents turned out. At a rally outside the same town hall in May, their chant had been "we can't drink data."

Nine days later, Lawler went on Fox Business to argue that New York's new limits on data center permits hurt innovation and push the industry toward China. He had already voted for a bill that would have barred states from writing AI rules in the first place.

Cindy Hyde-Smith told federal regulators Mississippi is "at the forefront of safeguarding ratepayers"

She said it at a July oversight hearing on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Two months earlier, energy economists had reported the opposite: Mississippi's 2024 law curtailed its Public Service Commission's oversight, hid Entergy's contract with Amazon from the public, and let the utility start recovering data center costs through everyone's rates before the facilities even opened. Residential customers had already paid $38 million toward Amazon's data centers.

The phrase she used for what data centers pay — "their fair share" — is her utility donor's own branding. Entergy launched a "Fair Share Plus" pledge in March 2026.

The pattern

Not one of these eight was warning anybody about data centers a year ago. For five of them — Husted, Rogers, Barrett, Garrity and Tiffany — the concern arrived on the same schedule the polling did.

That timing is the whole story. A politician who opposed something before it was popular has a record. A politician who opposed it three weeks after 75% of the country did has a press release.

The other three did not reposition at all. Blackburn was still calling data centers "good and important" in June. Lawler went on national television to attack New York's new limits on them, nine days after a board in his own district stopped one. And Hyde-Smith told federal regulators her state was at the forefront of protecting ratepayers, two years after that state's own law curtailed the commission whose job that is.

And the alternative to repositioning is worse. When constituents organized against data centers, seven Republicans decided China might be behind it — and four of them asked the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate who was funding the opposition.

The people showing up at township meetings are not confused about who they are. They are the ones who read the electric bill.

In November, they're also the ones who fill out the ballot.