Yesterday’s election brought a blue tsunami of Democratic wins across the country. Democrats are projected to retake the House and Senate after a brutal midterm that centered on the economy and affordability, healthcare, the war with Iran, immigration, and, more than any election before it, AI and data centers.
This weekend, I’m attending Accelerator for America’s Advisory Council meeting in Tampa, where I’ll hear how mayors and cities are confronting these issues, with AI at the top of that list. And on the heels of a historic election, it’s a good time to ask what voters are saying about AI and what cities are doing about it.
Let’s dive in.
Jared Giles
Founder, SquareOne
[email protected]
Voters Want a Better Deal
Even though data centers and AI aren’t the top issues for most voters, they are becoming an issue that unites voters across party lines, and yesterday they showed up at the ballot box:
Opposition is local: 57% of voters said AI will do more to hurt society than help, and 76% opposed building data centers in their communities.
It affects all parties: 57% of Republicans, 81% of Democrats, and 71% of Independents oppose local data centers.
It influenced votes: 56% of voters said AI and data centers were a crucial or major factor in their vote for Congress.
Opposition is stopping projects: Local opposition blocked or delayed at least 120 projects worth almost $200 billion in the first half of 2026.
Voters are being confronted with rising energy bills, excessive noise, excessive water use, and job losses, without an understanding of how these massive investments in technology will benefit them. Sentiment continues to sour, and, as a Raleigh council member said when her city paused new data centers, “the data center fight is carrying a lot of the weight for broader anxiety about AI.”
Cities have a responsibility to show residents how they can participate in the gains from AI and data centers, especially if residents are asked to carry some of the costs.
Many cities are working through how to thread the needle between AI adoption, safety, and data center development. On data centers, some are instituting moratoriums to give themselves time to write rules. Indianapolis enacted a moratorium through 2027, and Madison paired its pause with a zoning framework that built guardrails around what data centers can be built in the city. New York became the first state to impose a moratorium on data center construction in July, and New York City instituted a full ban on AI in schools in September.
But inside City Hall, AI is already working. Chattanooga made Google’s Gemini available to every city employee. Kansas City is using AI on 311 to help improve response times that lag in historically underserved parts of town. San José has trained roughly 15% of its municipal workforce through an AI Upskilling Program done in partnership with San José State University.
Accelerator for America laid out the full idea for cities earlier this year: AI can make government more efficient, upskill both city staff and residents, and become a catalyst for job quality, workforce transformation, and equitable economic opportunity. I think about this as three roles a city plays. The first is operator: using AI to fix processes, like getting providers paid on time or answering 311 calls faster. The second is decision-maker: using AI to aggregate data to understand the return on investment from their policies and programs. Most of the work above lives in those two roles.
The third role is steward of the local economy. AI companies are investing billions across the country through venture capital, data center development, and office leases, often with few requirements attached, while pathways to wealth creation and the middle-class are shrinking. So the question for mayors isn’t only how to use AI well, but also how to create policies that protect workers, hold AI companies to their commitments in the communities where they build, and make sure residents benefit from those investments. That will take intention and nuance.
Every AI decision a city makes, whether it’s a tool, a contract, or a data center, should answer one question: what do our residents get, and can we measure it? The cities that can answer that clearly will be the ones residents trust to build what comes next.
National Spotlight: Lancaster’s Community Benefits Agreement
What does it look like when a city sets the terms before anything is built? Look at Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
The Problem: When two data center campuses were proposed inside city limits, residents worried about noise, diesel backup generators, and water use after a drought. Mayor Danene Sorace concluded that zoning alone couldn’t secure the protections residents needed, so she negotiated a community benefits agreement with the developer.
The Intervention: The agreement requires the data centers to meet noise and air quality standards, run on 100% clean energy, avoid water-intensive cooling, and contribute $20 million across an Economic Development Fund and a Sustainable Development and Clean Energy Fund. It runs for 20 years, stays in force if the properties are sold, and puts economic development grants in the hands of a committee that includes the city, the Lancaster County Community Foundation, and the county’s economic development agency. Payments are secured by letters of credit, so the money is guaranteed, not promised. City Council approved it in November 2025.
The Takeaway: The community benefits agreement’s strength is enforcement: terms are set up front, money is backed by guarantees, and obligations are made that outlast the owner (some of which I discussed a couple weeks ago). Though the agreement’s language about job creation was criticized as being vague and should be amended for any future agreements by other cities (or by Lancaster with other companies).
ICYMI
[WATCH] MS NOW: A study on the “growing backlash” against data centers around the United States.
[REPORT] Accelerator for America: A series of case studies highlighting which cities are leading in the AI transition.
[READ] NAACP: A data center community benefits agreement template that includes model language on job creation, environmental protection, and other accountability metrics that can be used when negotiating with data center developers.
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