Data centers are quickly becoming the hottest issue on the campaign trail.
The fight over data centers may have started in Northern Virginia, but it's now expanding to many local elections for city councils and boards of supervisors across Virginia. Just ask Elena Schlossberg. She's executive director of the Coalition to Save Prince William County, and she helped oust two members of her local board of supervisors who supported rezoning land for data centers.
"The candidates understand that if you want to get elected or reelected, if you are not on the right side of this issue of data center development, you are not looking at the likelihood of winning," Schlossberg says. "It's self-preservation to be on the right side of the data center issue."
At the top of the ticket is U.S. Senator Mark Warner, who’s running for his fourth and final term this year. He has a new bill that would force disclosure of information data centers have been trying to keep secret.
"Before you can make any agreement to give any benefits to these data centers, all the non-disclosure agreements need to be disclosed so the community can make the judgment," Warner says. "And what I would use as the — as the hammer, in a sense, to make sure that these standards are met, is that these data centers should not be able to claim what's called either accelerated depreciation or bonus depreciation until they hit these standards."
Unlike most issues on the campaign trail, this one is bipartisan – with Republicans and Democrats both trying to figure out how to prevent being on the wrong side of the issue with voters.
