By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Democrat Cindy Holscher, who campaigned on a moratorium for data-center development, won the Kansas governor's race as the tech backlash reverberated in one of the country's most conservative states.
The state lawmaker beat her Republican rival Ty Masterson despite the state’s largest transit and railroad union, as well as a local chapter of the IBEW electrical workers union, backing her opponent over the issue.
"It’s the honor of a lifetime to serve as your next Governor," she wrote on X following the race call Thursday night. Masterson, a fellow state legislator, conceded the race.
Holscher's win is another example of how a Democratic candidate tapped into popular outrage around data centers and big tech, especially in rural areas. Gubernatorial candidates in Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Nevada seized on bipartisan fears about AI and data centers and pitched policies aimed at reining in the industry.
FARM BELT TURNS BLUE
The central US state also elected a Democrat for the US Senate for the first time in nearly a century, choosing pastor Adam Hamilton over incumbent Republican Roger Marshall in a backlash against Trump's immigration crackdown. It also flipped the state's attorney general, electing Democrat Chris Mann over incumbent Kris Kobach.
Holscher made data centers a central issue in her campaign, linking local anger over AI and its infrastructure to energy affordability and popular backlash against big tech.
She told Reuters earlier this year that supporting the position of a data center moratorium was a "no brainer" - because it was a top concern raised at every town hall she held across the state.
She backed the moratorium even when Democratic party officials initially advised her against it and she lost support of Kansas' top labor unions.
"What I was hearing from a lot of these folks is that they're tired of their communities being left behind in terms of economic development, but they don't want to have to sell out their resources or their people to be invested in," she told Reuters in an interview.
DATACENTER 'GUARDRAILS'
She said her moratorium would pause data center approvals until the state can get a handle on what impact they will have on the state and ensure that companies develop these projects in a way that helps, not harms communities.
"We have to have those guardrails, or it's not good for us," she said. "These big companies, some of the richest corporations in the world, can come in and steamroll some of our local city councils and our other local governing bodies."
Her opponent Masterson was supportive of data centers as a local economic driver and got backing from the state's labor unions, the first time in decades that they backed a Republican.
Kansas has been a destination for data center investment, part of a growing Midwestern technology hub dubbed the Silicon Prairie, has $46 billion in announced data center projects, primarily in the Kansas City area. Kansas is among the states targeted in a new pro-data center campaign backed by tech billionaires including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici. Editing by Michael Learmonth)