AI Industry Spending on 2026 Midterms Hits $265 Million as Data Center Backlash Splits Both Parties

In a Truth Social post this week, President Trump called data centers a "Golden Goose" and said any community opposed to them wants to be "backwards and poor." He accused critics of doing China's bidding. The problem for Trump and Republicans running in November: the public disagrees with him, and the industry is now spending hundreds of millions of dollars to change that.

An Economist/YouGov poll found just 14% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans think new data centers are good for America, according to The Independent. A Daily Wire opinion piece cited a broader figure: 71% of Americans oppose having a data center in their own community. A Gallup poll in May and a Public Policy Institute of California poll in July found similar numbers, according to CalMatters.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently claimed data centers "don't use water," a statement The Independent flagged as contradicting both public evidence and Lutnick's own comments last year that the facilities "suck" water. Nobody in the administration has walked that contradiction back.

The money pouring in

Corporate spending on the 2026 House and Senate races hit $517 million in the 15 months through the end of the first quarter, already topping the $461 million spent over the full two-year 2024 cycle, according to data compiled by Public Citizen and reported by Reuters. Crypto, AI and online betting companies accounted for at least $294 million of that total.

"The scale of corporate spending in this election cycle is unlike anything we've seen previously," Rick Claypool, Public Citizen's research director, told Reuters. He argued the money crowds out debate on "cheaper groceries" in favor of niche regulatory fights over crypto and AI.

On the pro-data-center side, the super PAC Leading the Future has raised $140 million for the midterms, per The Independent. A newer group, Build American AI, has roughly $50 million on hand, backed by OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, his wife Anna Brockman, and venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, according to Breitbart. The group announced a new political arm called Building the Future and an ad campaign in Kansas, Ohio and Wisconsin aimed at shaping local data center rules. It frames itself as pushing "responsible" development that protects ratepayers and water resources rather than blocking construction outright.

Who's funding the opposition

Fox News Digital reported that several groups organizing against data centers, including Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, have received funding from progressive networks tied to George Soros's Open Society Foundations and Arabella Advisors' Sixteen Thirty Fund. Fox also reported that CodePink has taken funding linked to Neville Roy Singham, whom Fox says has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Larry Behrens of Power The Future told Fox News Digital the opposition follows "a playbook we've seen before," comparing it to organizing against the Dakota Access Pipeline. That's Behrens's characterization of a documented funding relationship, not evidence that local residents opposing a specific data center project are being paid or directed. Homeowners in Loudoun County, Virginia, and voters in Monterey Park, California, who passed a ballot measure permanently banning data centers, are not named in that funding chain.

The Daily Wire's opinion section made a different argument: that Silicon Valley created its own backlash by selling AI as simultaneously miraculous and job-destroying. It cited Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's public comment describing a future where "20% of people don't have jobs" alongside a booming economy. This suggests the anger is organic, rooted in economic anxiety, rather than manufactured by dark money on either side.

Where the fight goes next

California is the clearest test case. Seven bills regulating data centers are moving through the Legislature, with utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric leading lobbying spending after posting its second-biggest lobbying quarter since 1999, according to CalMatters. Amazon alone spent more than $500,000 lobbying on 33 pieces of legislation in the first half of 2026.

State Sen. Steve Padilla, a Chula Vista Democrat who authored two of the bills, told CalMatters the concern is "bipartisan, its national, and its across the board." Whichever bills clear the Legislature head to Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk for a signature or veto by the end of September, a decision CalMatters called a likely bellwether for how other states handle the fight.

New York's one-year statewide moratorium on large data center construction, issued in July, remains the most aggressive state action so far. Whether California follows with permanent restrictions, or whether industry lobbying dollars blunt the bills before they reach Newsom's desk, will be decided within weeks.