New York Republicans are leaning into a pro-technology, pro-business pitch in this year’s biggest November contests, betting that voters will reward candidates who embrace growth as Democrats seek to channel rising backlash over data centers and artificial intelligence.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, working to protect her 10-point advantage in a reelection fight against Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, recently escalated the debate by putting a one-year statewide pause on new data center projects in New York, even as AI’s rapid expansion drives demand for the facilities.
“This is a reaction to the anxiety we’re hearing around this,” Hochul recently claimed.
“The bottom line is progress shouldn’t arrive with a higher utility bill, deleted water supply or noise pollution. So we have no choice but to address these challenges created by these massive facilities,” she said.
The issue is also becoming a focus for prominent congressional Democrats, including Cait Conley, who is challenging Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in the Hudson Valley.
“Right now, where we’re just letting corporations literally pass costs off to our communities and extort benefit, that’s not the right answer,” Conley said last month during a forum hosted by the Dutchess County Chamber of Commerce.
“And as we’ve learned with social-media companies, they’re not going to do the right thing themselves,” she added, arguing for tighter oversight of data center development when asked about the topic.
A Siena University poll released last month underscored the political challenge for AI supporters: just 29% of likely New York voters said they view the technology favorably, while 52% held an unfavorable opinion.
Younger voters between ages 18 and 35 are decidedly against the tech, with only 23% telling Siena they view it favorably, compared with a massive 71% who consider it unfavorable.
But Blakeman, railing against Hochul’s moratorium, has said such opposition is just another example of Democrats’ anti-business sentiments.
“To bury your head in the sand, with the fastest growing industry in the world, again, this is the reason why we’re 50th in economic development,” he said.
“This is the reason young people are moving out of our estate to places where there’s more economic opportunity.”
But Blakeman, and other GOP reps aren’t blind to voters’ anxieties, either.
He said the state needs to institute controls over energy usage and that local governments should exert power to extract public benefits from any new developments.
“We do not want AI to go offshore. We do want AI companies to be operating out of China, certainly not American companies,” Lawler pointed out at the Duchess County forum last month.
“So we need to have a all-of-government approach to this. The federal government, state governments and local municipalities need to be working together collaboratively to address the concerns, to make sure that these large-scale data centers are not taking away power from the people,” he said.
Josh Vlasto, one of the operatives heading Leading the Future, a super PAC supported by AI-firms, said he thinks anti-tech sentiments are being overblown.
“What you’re seeing on the data center debate, what you’re seeing around AI, what we had previously seen on crypto, are really extreme voices trying to derail progress on policy,” Vlasto said.
“The American public just wants to harness the benefits of AI and have a smart policy to mitigate the downsides and the risks. To us, it’s not that complicated,” he said.
