Maine’s data center revolt will decide who controls the Senate

October 30, 2026 · by TPW Pipeline

As tech billionaires pour record millions into Maine’s high-stakes Senate race, rural voters push back against the resource strain, rising utility costs, and phantom jobs of the AI data center boom.

by Abigail BassettOct 30, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, was midway through defending her record during the final debate of the midterms when an audience member cut her short.

“I’m terrified,” a man shouted. “AI data centers are destroying our climate. They are poisoning our water.” Collins brushed off the outburst, tying the man to her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson. But the fear echoing through the auditorium wasn’t so easily dismissed. Just days before voters head to the polls, the rapid expansion of resource-hungry data centers has exploded into one of Maine’s most volatile campaign issues.

Maine drew national headlines in April when the state Legislature passed what would have been the nation’s first statewide moratorium on large data centers — had Gov. Janet Mills not vetoed the bill 10 days later. But the fight hasn’t slowed down, with towns across the state adopting temporary moratoriums or putting the question of data center expansion to voters this November. In a September poll of Mainers by UMass Lowell and YouGov, 76 percent of respondents said they oppose building a data center in their community, with 58 percent strongly opposed.

Maine’s hotly contested Senate race is set to be the most expensive Senate race per capita that the US has ever seen, with Democrats spending a projected $81 million and Republicans $114 million. Much of that campaign cash has come from the very industry Mainers and rural voters across the country have been fighting for more than a year. The outcome of the race will help determine which party controls the Senate and help shape federal data center and AI policy, impacting data center construction not just for Maine residents, but for the entire country.

Cheap land, rich water

Maine and other rural states are becoming prime targets for new data centers. While cities run short on land and power, Maine has abundant cheap land, vacant industrial mills and buildings, and ample access to water, thanks to its numerous rivers and waterways. Recognizing the high stakes, major tech companies and private equity firms tied to data centers and AI have invested millions in the midterms to win over skeptical locals.

The issue has sparked fierce local debate, leading towns and cities across the state to enact temporary bans this summer.

Molly White, the researcher, writer, and software engineer behind Tech Influence Watch, says that voters are paying a lot of attention to the issue because they connect data centers to rising costs for utilities. As White points out, many Mainers are also already feeling the pinch due to record-high heating oil costs this fall, and “they’re now looking at an election where the question is, is this candidate going to invite a data center to move in next door, and then my electricity prices go up, or the knock-on effects are going to hurt me even more when I’m already in very dire straits?” she said.

White launched her site in 2024 to track crypto spending in political races, but has since expanded it to monitor AI and Big Tech investments. White says the playbook that AI and data center backers are using in the midterms is very similar to the one the cryptocurrency industry used in 2024.

“There’s a lot going on in this election,” White says, “but I do think it has been a big issue in Maine and across the country, where you’ll go to a political event, you’ll see people asking questions of candidates, and AI keeps coming up. Certainly there’s a lot of questions about the economy, the war, all these different things, but AI is the new one.”

Data center developers and their political allies often sell rural Maine communities on long-term job creation — a promise economists say rarely materializes. In reality, economic research indicates that most data centers create virtually no net employment once construction is complete.

Historically, Maine’s industry has centered around lumber and timber, shipbuilding, commercial fishing, textiles, and pulp and paper manufacturing. The timber industry contributed around $8.3 billion to Maine’s economy in 2024, but Donald Trump’s tariffs and rising operating costs have hit it hard, resulting in mill closures and layoffs.

Mark Brewer, who chairs the political science department at the University of Maine, says Maine’s history complicates the debate. These former mill towns jump at the chance to rebuild their local tax bases and infrastructure, but past boom-and-bust cycles make residents cautious.

“Maine has a long history of extractive industries providing jobs,” Brewer says, which allowed Mainers to tolerate these industries despite the state’s environmental focus. With data centers thus far, he says, “the jobs part of it’s not there. It’s one thing to put up with a paper mill that’s employing three shifts of 1,000 workers, right? Data centers aren’t doing that.”

For many rural Mainers, the question is not only whether a data center will bring jobs back, but whether to trust the companies promising them or the government helping make the deal, said Nicholas Jacobs, the director of the Public Policy Lab at Colby College in Maine. These residents say they’re concerned about the opaque ownership of these data centers, limited long-term employment, and the risk of wealth being extracted from rural communities.

Tech millions fuel Collins’ reelection war chest

Tech and AI interests see an ally in Susan Collins, the 73-year-old Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Like most congressional Republicans, she has largely supported data centers and AI, though she has said she believes data centers should be evaluated on an individual basis. Collins has even used her position as head of the Appropriations Committee to secure $6.2 million in federal funding for a high-performance computing hub data center in central Maine, which is designed t

Source: www.theverge.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.

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