Booed for Asking: Data Centers Became a Midterm Flashpoint in Brooklyn

Almost $200 billion in data center projects were delayed, stalled, or blocked in the first half of 2026 by political and community opposition, according to a report from Data Center Watch — and on Thursday evening in Brooklyn, that backlash filled a warehouse.

Newsreel, the media company founded by former Forbes and Newsweek reporter Jack Brewster, hosted a midterm election event five days before the November 3 vote. The stated goal, Brewster said, was for people to "put their phones away and talk to each other about the election, five days out." The lineup included Kenneth Schlenker, co-founder of the focus app Opal, in a fireside chat on "the state of attention," and Aryan Ranjan, builder of the campaign management software Baraza, delivering a midterm forecast. The room held media figures, technologists, and policy advocates.

One topic consumed nearly every conversation: AI, data centers, and anger at the tech class.

Why does this matter for November 3?

Outside the tech bubble, data centers and AI have become an intense enough ballot-box issue that they could sway some midterm races. Data centers are the physical embodiment of public fears about the pace of technology — a point made explicitly on the panel I moderated.

The scale of the confrontation is measurable. Beyond the nearly $200 billion in stalled projects, states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, New York, and Virginia are weighing new guardrails and transparency rules around rapid data center development. Virginia, already nicknamed the "data center capital of the world," has hundreds of new data centers planned within its borders.

The chasm between the industry and everyone else is widening. Tech insiders talk with optimism about AI's benefits and build aggressively toward them. Beyond that world, the same projects look like a threat — to jobs, to communities, and to the environment.

What happened when the crowd was asked?

I moderated a panel on data centers with Maia Woluchem, a technology and human rights researcher, and Hilary Flint, an environmental and public health advocate. When I took the stage, I asked the room: "Who here is pro-AI data center?" The crowd booed.

The conversation covered a range of topics and emotions. Attendees said big tech companies appear to cut secret deals with local officials to build billion-dollar data centers. In some cases, zoning rules leave residents unclear about what is being built until it is too late to protest.

People are also struggling with the cost of living and trying to hold onto what remains of the American Dream while tech leaders talk about AI replacing workers, or humanity itself. Residents feel they have lost control over what happens in their communities, and they worry about environmental and health risks.

When I raised the benefits some communities have seen from data center build-outs, Flint answered with a question of her own.

"What is a life worth?" she said. People keep protesting, she said, because they "value their lives a little bit more than a temporary check."

What did the politicians say?

Just before my panel, New York City Council member Chi Ossé sat for a fireside chat. AI came up near the end. Ossé said he does not really use it, and he struck me as neither for nor against the technology. He wanted tech executives held more accountable and trillionaires like Elon Musk taxed more. He described himself as a democratic socialist, but a "law and order" one. When CEOs discuss a technology that could, in his words, deplete 10% of human civilization, he said, "they should be called to testify in front of Congress."

Why did a Democratic Party panel turn to data centers?

The panel after mine was supposed to discuss the future of the Democratic Party. Its members were NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon; political strategist Morris Katz, who worked on Zohran Mamdani's campaign; and Vox's Astead Herndon. The conversation shifted, once again, to data centers.

Ungar-Sargon noted that some labor unions support data centers because of the jobs they promise — though reports show data centers create many jobs during construction, and those jobs are not permanent once construction ends.

She contrasted today's build-outs with the industrial buildings of the Rust Belt, nodding to an earlier comment I had made about data centers being ugly.

"There used to be a lot of pride in a community in the Rust Belt about very ugly, enormous buildings in their communities because everybody worked there," she said. "And they knew that building represented prosperity for themselves, stability for their children, and a future and a piece of the American dream."

Herndon noted that Vivek Ramaswamy was booed for making a similar point in Ohio, a Rust Belt state. "I just want to reinforce the lack of consent happening," he said. "Because that's true among Republicans in those places and I've watched it."

Katz was skeptical of the industry's promises. "It's the same people who have taken so many union jobs away," he said. "The same institutional powers that have robbed labor and working people of jobs and profit. Now coming back to essentially finish the job and take whatever scraps remain."

Along the warehouse walls, sticky notes answered posted questions, including "Will we ever be able to get Big Money out of politics?" One note read: "God, I hope so."

Is this only a Brooklyn phenomenon?

After the panels ended and techno music began, attendees broke into small groups, and AI and data centers remained the topic — this time in private conversations. I asked Brewster whether the intensity had surprised him.

"It came up in every conversation on stage, and it was the second most common topic in the questions people sent us when they RSVP'd," he said. He noted this was happening in New York, a place where data centers are not very visible.

"AI has become an election issue for regular voters," Brewster said. "In rural communities, the backlash is about feeling replaced. In a place like Brooklyn, it's more about who gets rich from it."

The backlash is spreading into places far from policy circles. Before leaving, I asked people to name the craziest thing they had seen in tech this year. Two tech founders mentioned the AI assistant startup Instinct. A non-tech person named Sam Altman. Another non-tech person raised deepfakes and AI art — noting that AI art now signals cheapness, which may explain why luxury brands are moving the other way: Prada's holiday campaign features hand-drawn illustrations, and Hermès has been spotlighting artists' handmade work on Instagram.

One software engineer told me data centers are appearing in her Southern California hometown. She grew up in a Chinese immigrant community there, where neighbors have put signs in their yards showing dragons choking a data center. The signs, she said, have since been translated into other languages.

That detail closes the loop on the evening. When roughly $200 billion in projects meets organized, multilingual, yard-sign opposition, the data center fight has moved from county zoning boards to midterm elections — and both parties are now reckoning with voters who did not consent.