Data center moratoriums are on the ballot in 16 governor races
Thirty-six governorships are up on Tuesday, and data centers have gone from a zoning hearing to a campaign plank in the space of one cycle. The spin on the story is bigger than the arithmetic behind it.
The Information reported Sunday that candidates backing a data center moratorium could win up to 15 of the 36 governors' races, naming Texas, Ohio, Michigan and New York. That is an analysis, not a count from the underlying research, and the count tells a narrower story: 16 states have at least one gubernatorial candidate calling for a temporary moratorium, out of a field where only a handful of races are actually competitive. The gap between "could win 15" and "is competitive in about six" is where this election will actually be decided, and it matters because the outcome determines whether the backlash becomes state policy or stays a local zoning problem.
What the data actually says
The dataset both The Information and Wired are downstream of is MultiState's candidate-by-candidate tracker, published September 18. Its findings: 36 gubernatorial races on the November 3 ballot, at least one moratorium-backing candidate in 16 states, and fewer than ten candidates across the whole country pledging unconditional support for data centers. Wired put the individual count at "at least 20 candidates in the 36 gubernatorial races" in its October 11 survey of the midterms.
Twenty candidates is not 15 races. For The Information's number to hold, nearly every one of those 16 states would have to be winnable by the moratorium candidate, and several are not close: Doug Jones in Alabama, Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina, Jerri Green in Tennessee, Fredrick Love in Arkansas, Cindy Holscher in Kansas, Mike Minogue in Massachusetts, Dan Cox in Maryland. Those are long shots in states that are either safely Republican or safely Democratic regardless of data centers. A hand count of MultiState's own table turns up 17 states with a flagged candidate, one more than the text says — which is a fair warning about how precise any of these totals are.
The realistic competitive set is five or six: Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Oregon, and possibly Maine.
Texas is the one that matters
Texas is the only large race where a sitting governor's data center record is the live argument. Governor Greg Abbott is "neck-in-neck" with Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa, per the Texas Tribune, and both campaigns now compete over who is tougher on the industry. Abbott ordered state agencies to stop issuing data center permits pending a grid review in August, telling an audience that data centers had "dug their own grave" and "got the backlash they deserve."
The money is the sharpest number in the race. Abbott has taken about $9 million from data center-related donors since July 2025, roughly 13% of everything he raised in that period — $4.9 million directly and $4.1 million through intermediaries, including $2.8 million in the single month after he announced the pause. Hinojosa's campaign advertises $20 million, using a looser definition of "related" that the Tribune declined to adopt; the $9 million figure is the one with a published methodology behind it.
Industry is pushing back in public. Crow Holdings' Michael Hyun called a crackdown "economic suicide," and Hines' Laura Hines-Pierce told The Real Deal that "data centers don't need to be a Star Wars ship that landed in the middle of a community" — an argument for better siting, not fewer projects. One terminology snag worth flagging: the Texas pause is attributed variously to the environmental agency, the utility commission and the grid operator across three reports of it, so treat "Texas halted data center permits" as directionally right and administratively fuzzy.
New York has already answered
New York is on the ballot, but the question there is settled. Governor Kathy Hochul signed the country's first statewide moratorium by executive order in July, for one year, after the legislature passed a stricter omnibus bill; she has until the end of the year to sign or veto that bill, and the order was widely read as a way to take the issue away from a legislature that wanted a harder line. She told Wired the approach is "democracy in action. If you want it, it should come with all kinds of guardrails and restraints, but if you don't want it, it doesn't come."
Voters seem to agree with the direction and not with the timing. A September Siena poll found 63% of New Yorkers would oppose a data center in their area even after the moratorium expires, including 75% of Democrats. Quinnipiac has Hochul ahead of challenger Bruce Blakeman 53–31 on handling AI and data centers. Organizers who pushed for the pause are unimpressed by the politics of it: "I feel like she's just trying to shut us up," one told Wired, while State Senator Kristen Gonzalez called the moratorium "a first step, but it can't be the last."
Where the decisions actually land
The governors' races are the headline; the local ballot is where the policy gets made. Ohio has at least 125 local data center moratoriums in effect and 14 local ballot measures on Tuesday alone, according to MultiState's tally — and Ohio's gubernatorial nominees both land in the "regulations" column, not the moratorium one. Twenty-eight localities across six states vote on data center measures this cycle; Kansas towns including Emporia and El Dorado are weighing ten-year bans, and Edgewater, Florida has a charter amendment.
The state-level trend runs both ways. West Virginia in 2025 and South Dakota this year passed laws stripping local governments of authority over data centers; Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed a statewide moratorium bill in April on local-control grounds. Virginia now requires impact studies before by-right approval, a fight we covered when Virginia ended by-right approval for big data centers.
The money is following the issue. Pew counted $12 million spent on political advertising that mentions data centers in the 90 days before the midterms, Wired reported. For scale, that is real money in state races and a rounding error in a national campaign — the signature of an issue that decides close elections rather than one that drives them.
The counter-argument
MultiState's own analysis adds a caveat that undercuts the wave framing: recent polling suggests concerns about data centers and AI "are not a big concern for many voters," citing a New York Times Upshot survey from September 16. That is consistent with what we found in September, when local opposition blocked $68 billion of US data centers in one quarter — the pressure is concentrated, project-specific and organized at the county level, not a national voting bloc. It is also consistent with a simpler read: the issue moves elections where a project is already proposed, and does nothing where one isn't.
One more distortion worth naming. "Moratorium" is being used for three different things: a statute (New York's pending omnibus bill), an executive pause (Hochul's order, Abbott's permit freeze), and "regulations" (the modal position, held by both Ohio nominees). MultiState says outright that candidates use the word loosely, some for a short information-gathering pause and others for a permanent ban. Anyone counting moratorium candidates on Tuesday night is counting three incompatible policies under one label.
What to watch
Texas is the tell. If Abbott holds on after pausing permits and taking $9 million from the industry he paused, the lesson for 2028 is that a governor can have both. If Hinojosa wins, every state with a contested data center corridor gets a template. Then watch the New York legislature's bill deadline at year end, and the Ohio local measures, which will pass or fail regardless of who wins the governor's mansion. We will follow the results Wednesday.
Which way do you think the Texas race goes — and does a moratorium actually stop a project, or just move it to the next county? Write to us via our contact page.
