Chad Davis (CC BY 2.0)
A Foxconn data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, December 2023.
In many ways, the race to be Wisconsin’s next governor is a microcosm of developments happening around the country.
The race features politicians from both parties pandering to rural voters. In one campaign ad, U.S. Representative Tom Tiffany, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the state’s August 11 primary, walks a cow with a halter to display some kind of rural authenticity. One of the Democrats vying for the job, state Representative Francesca Hong, part of the party’s insurgent democratic socialist wing, showed up at a farm to celebrate June Dairy month. (Somewhat awkwardly, her photo-op was with beef cattle, not dairy cattle.)
Forced attempts to resonate with voters aside, Tiffany, Hong and other candidates in the race have been taking positions on an issue that is seriously affecting rural people in Wisconsin and elsewhere. If rural Wisconsinites play their cards right, they could use this moment of bipartisan concern to push for real changes, making candidates commit to initiatives around economics and infrastructure.
For many people who call the countryside home, data centers have become the obtrusive physical manifestation of the latest tech industry development.
Wisconsin is like many other states in this regard. With a few centers already operating in the state and others in the works, proponents claim these massive, sometimes 1,000-plus-acre installations bring jobs and fuel economic growth. Opponents, especially the people seeing these massive centers appear in their areas, denounce them for increasing energy bills, draining water, threatening farmland, and negatively impacting air quality. Opponents also cite financial risks to the municipalities that host data centers.
In short, data center development appears to be the latest corporate scheme to extract resources without consulting the people impacted.
As such, ongoing grassroots mobilizations that challenge data center development constitute attempts to make our economy a little more democratic. Additionally, they provide an opportunity to push politicians to do more than pander.
That data centers are emerging so quickly is due in no small measure to how rural areas have been ravaged economically.
Farm consolidation in Wisconsin, for instance, has seen the number of dairy farms drop from about 45,000 in 1980 to just over 5,000 in 2026. In fact, nationwide since 2000, the number of dairy farms has fallen by 71 percent, with about half a million operations going out of business.
Meanwhile, some legislators seem intent on making life harder for rural residents.
Consider the Trump Administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and its Medicare and Medicaid cuts that contributed to closing rural hospitals. All the while, our current administration’s tariff regime and Iran war quagmire makes farming less and less profitable by disrupting markets and increasing the cost of inputs like fertilizer.
In terms of positive proposals that candidates could champion, to start, they could voice support for dairy farmers with the recently introduced Milk from Family Dairies Act. This legislation could keep farmers on the land by assuring a stable, fair price for producers, especially small-scale operators.
Candidates should also be pressed on improving rural infrastructure, which, besides quality hospitals, includes decent schools and adequate Internet access. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, rural school closings are part of a larger trend, which, in chicken-and-egg fashion, is chalked up to demographic decline. Instead of giving up on rural areas, lawmakers and candidates for office should be taking a stand and proposing investments in rural education to keep people in the countryside instead of driving them to cities.
Grassroots opposition to corporate hyperscale data center expansion has generated a rare moment when members of both parties seem unified with many voters. In the context of such disputes, rural people deserve to hear real commitments for positive change. Those running for governor in Wisconsin, or any office around the country, need our votes. It’s time we make our candidates earn them.
his column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.