As loyal Republicans, Reece Payton said that he and his family of cattle ranchers in Hogansville, Ga., had one thing on their minds when they cast their ballots in November for the state’s utility board — “to make a statement.”
They were already irked by their escalating electric bills, not to mention an extra $50 a month levied by their local utility to cover a new nuclear power plant more than 200 miles away. But after they heard a data center might be built next to their Logos Ranch, about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta, they had enough of Republicans who seemed far too receptive to the interests of the booming artificial intelligence industry.
“That’s the first time I ever voted Democrat,” Mr. Payton, 58, said.
Message sent.
In some of Georgia’s reddest and most rural counties, Republicans crossed party lines this month and helped propel two Democrats, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson, to landslide upsets, ousting the incumbent candidates on the Georgia Public Service Commission. No Democrat has served on the five-person commission, which regulates utilities and helps set climate and energy policy, since 2007.
Across the country, Democrats have seized on rising anxiety over electricity costs and data centers in what could be a template for the 2026 midterm elections.
In Virginia, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger pledged during her campaign to lower energy bills and make data centers pay more. In the House of Delegates, one Democratic challenger unseated a Republican incumbent by focusing on curbing the proliferation of data centers in Loudoun County and the exurbs of the nation’s capital.
In New Jersey, Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill promised to declare a state of emergency on utility costs and freeze rates. And in Memphis, State Representative Justin J. Pearson, who is challenging Representative Steve Cohen in a high-profile Democratic primary next year, has vowed to fight a supercomputer by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, that would be located in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Strong opposition by citizens forced the Tucson City Council in August to pull the plug on an Amazon data center slated for that Arizona city, and then in September forced Google to call off one in Indianapolis.
“Electricity is the new price of eggs,” said Charles Hua, executive director of Powerlines, a nonpartisan organization which aims to modernize utility regulations and reduce power bills. “This is a defining moment for politicians of all stripes — what’s your answer to lowering utility bills? Because I think consumers and voters are looking for leadership on this.”
After meeting recently with Virginia legislators, Mr. Hua said he was struck by how “the nexus of data centers and utility bills actually came up very consistently.”
In 2022, a spike in natural gas prices following the Russian invasion of Ukraine fueled a rise in energy costs around the U.S. Utilities have also undertaken costly projects to modernize the power grid and improve the infrastructure to guard against extreme weather and absorb an anticipated surge in demand from data centers.
As the price of electricity has risen, more American customers have fallen behind on their utility bills, or have had their power cut off.
Georgia ranks 35th in energy affordability, in part because of cost overruns and delays associated with its new Plant Vogtle nuclear generators in Waynesboro, according to the American Legislative Exchange Council, an influential conservative policy group.
So it wasn’t a surprise when Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — candidates in the Republican primary to succeed term-limited Gov. Brian Kemp — called November’s results a referendum on affordability. “You’re a fool if you don’t recognize that,” Mr. Carr said.
Some Georgia Republicans have cautioned against reading too much into the 25-percentage-point losses suffered by the utility board incumbents, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson.
This year’s elections stemmed from a 2020 federal lawsuit, which contended that the statewide elections for commission seats, which represent geographic districts, were unfair to Black voters. An appeals court eventually ruled against the plaintiffs, but the legal battle delayed the elections — setting the stage for November’s two races, the only statewide ones this year. (Two more utility seats will be contested in 2026.)
Democratic turnout was also boosted, Republicans said, by municipal elections in strongholds like Atlanta.
“I think it’s a complete anomaly,” State Senator Greg Dolezal said at a Republican event in Valdosta to tout his candidacy for lieutenant governor next year. Noting the comfortable margins racked up by President Trump in 2024 and Mr. Kemp in 2022, he added, “There’s no planet on which a 65-35 split is representative.”
One plaintiff in the lawsuit was Brionté McCorkle, executive director of Georgia Conservation Voters. She said the lawsuit enabled advocacy groups to develop a plan to help people “connect the dots” between the bills they were receiving and the commission’s role in approving six rate increases for Georgia Power, the state’s largest electric provider, over the last two years.
The group’s political action fund spent $2.3 million, sending half a million texts, plastering 92 billboards across the state and producing an anti-incumbent website.
That outreach made a difference, she said, pointing to Lowndes and Brooks counties on the Florida border. In previous races for federal and state offices going back to 2018, including the public service commission, Republicans won there by 20 points.
This year, Mr. Echols and Mr. Johnson each lost by 20 points.
At a weekly food pantry run by South Street Care House in Valdosta, Ga., where dozens of cars had lined up to receive a box full of fresh fruits, vegetables, breads and other staples, several people said they had heard about the election through texts and social media.
Barbara Lehman, 66, is typically a reliable Republican, but not this time, according to her daughter Angela and granddaughter Shelby, who were among those waiting for food.
“If the power companies want to expand their business, then that should be on them, not the consumer,” Ms. Lehman said in a text message. “Some people are just barely making it as it is.”
At the event attended by Mr. Dolezal and two other candidates for statewide offices, Gary McMillan, a former chair of the Lowndes County Republican Party, said that he, too, knew Republicans who bucked the party.
“They said my electric bills keep going up, and Republicans control the public service commission, and I’ve got a problem with that,” Mr. McMillan recounted. “I told all of them, elect a Democrat, and your bills will go up some more.”
Data centers have been a prominent issue in Atlanta’s rural exurbs. Mr. Trump wants to accelerate their growth in the battle for A.I. supremacy. At least 26 are under construction within 60 miles of Atlanta, and another 52 are planned.
But some Georgia Republicans — including Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is resigning her seat in January — have questioned the facilities’ use of resources. Some residents say local wells have been damaged, and the cost of municipal water has climbed.
Good Jobs First, a liberal group that tracks tax breaks for corporations, has said the state has done a poor job disclosing subsidies for data centers. The public service commission’s own staff has also warned that monthly residential bills could climb by $20 a month or more (a figure disputed by the utility) if the commission approves Georgia Power’s proposal to add almost 10,000 megawatts of power to accommodate data centers — the equivalent of nine nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle.
Only one-third of that proposal should be approved, the staff recommended.
In Troup County on the Alabama border, the victorious Democratic utility candidates whittled 24-point romps enjoyed by the Republican candidates in 2020 and 2018 down to 10, thanks to voters like the Paytons.
The Paytons had never been to a Hogansville City Council meeting before they heard about a proposal to build a data center on 437 acres next to their ranch, and across from their Georgia Untamed Zoo, which houses animals like sloths and capybaras and is popular with school field trips. Now they’ve been to two, and counting.
Mr. Payton and his wife, Tina, stressed that they didn’t mind data centers, as long as they were placed in industrial areas, and the public had input. But in nearby LaGrange, Ga., he noted, residents were blindsided by an $8 billion project now under construction.
So when a Democratic candidate for Congress recently posted on the Troup County Anti-Data Center Coalition’s Facebook page pledging to be “an ally in this fight,” Tina Payton urged her to attend an upcoming Hogansville forum on the issue.
“I blame Trump for what’s happening here, because Trump is pushing the data center,” Mr. Payton said. “Kemp jumped on the bandwagon, and these guys that were in there were doing nothing more than what Kemp was telling them.”
Also attending the council meeting was Chance Williams, 56, who owns an auto repair business a half mile down the road from the Paytons, within earshot of the zoo’s cackling lemurs.
During a tour of the data center’s footprint in his truck, Mr. Williams described himself and his wife Barbara, 58, as common-sense conservatives who treasure rural rhythms.
“I want to hear the crickets when I go to bed, not the hum of a fan up the road.” Ms. Williams said.
When voting for the utility races started on Oct. 14, she automatically chose the Republicans. Then she and her husband learned about the data center.
“We probably voted wrong,” she said.
David W. Chen is a Times reporter focused on state legislatures, state level policymaking and the political forces behind them.
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