威廉斯堡，俄亥俄州 — 杰西卡·贝克翻看着她过去一个月收到的堆满的政治宣传单。
WILLIAMSBURG, Ohio — Jessica Baker sifted through an overflowing pile of political mailers she has received over the past month.
降低成本？“那是常识，”她说。降低汽油价格和公用事业账单？“我们需要这个。”党派分裂，文化战争 — — 这些都有。但没有一件触及她在投票前想听到的议题：数据中心。
Lowering costs? “That’s common sense,” she said. Reducing gas prices and utility bills? “We need that.”Party division, culture wars — it’s all there. But none of it touched the issue she wants to hear about before she votes: data centers.
“我的家正遭到攻击，”草根倡导组织“保护俄亥俄”（Conserve Ohio）的主要组织者贝克在客厅里对MS NOW说。就在她几步之外，堆满了请愿书和自制地图，标注着俄亥俄州各地正在建设的数据中心位置。她说，仅仅几个月，这个议题就把她从一个大多不关心政治的人变成了经常往返州议会大厦递交请愿书的人。她所在的城镇没有数据中心，但计划就在几分钟车程外建一个。
“My home’s under attack,” Baker, a lead organizer for the grassroots advocacy group Conserve Ohio, told MS NOW in her living room. Just a few steps away were piles of petitions and homemade maps marking where data centers are being built across Ohio. In just a few months, she said, the issue turned her from someone who was mostly apolitical into someone who ferries petitions to and from the statehouse. There isn’t a data center in her town, but there are plans to build one just a few minutes’ drive away.
“一切不会止步于那条产权线。所以，一旦我们开始意识到它们正无处不在，而且没人愿意倾听，我们就 — — ”她停了下来。“别无选择。根本没有选择。”
“Everything doesn’t stop at that property line. So, once we started realizing that they were coming everywhere, and nobody would listen, we had —” she stops herself. “There was no choice. There’s just no choice.”
她指了指那些宣传单。“这就是这里没有的：它们不在这里。”但人们将在十一月投票。
She pointed back at the mailers. “That’s what’s not on here: The are not on here.”But the people will vote in November.
今年俄亥俄州有州长、参议院和众议院的激烈竞争 — — 而且民主党在国会选举中的胜利可能有助于改变国会山的权力平衡。俄亥俄州还拥有全国最多的与数据中心相关的投票议题：21项，分布在16个县，主要集中在那些两年前压倒性支持共和党的地区。
Ohio has competitive races this year for governor, Senate and House — and Democratic wins in the congressional contests could help tip the balance of power on Capitol Hill. Ohio also has more data center-related ballot measures than anywhere else in the country: 21 of them, spread across 16 counties, mostly in areas that overwhelmingly voted Republican just two years ago.
数据中心在两党中都不受欢迎。在九月NBC新闻的民意调查中，近半数共和党选民表示，如果候选人支持在他们当地社区建设数据中心，他们投票支持该候选人的可能性会降低。
Data centers are unpopular across party lines. In a September NBC News poll nearly half of Republican voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supports building data centers in their local communities.
这使得原本就竞争激烈的选举变得更难预测，而 nowhere 比参议院选举更甚。
That is making an already competitive election even less predictable, and nowhere more so than in the Senate race.
俄亥俄州在过去十多年里一直坚定地支持共和党。因此，从理论上讲，共和党参议员乔恩·赫斯特德（Jon Husted）应该能够轻松赢得副总统JD·万斯（JD Vance）剩余的参议院任期。然而，由于该州数据中心产业迅猛发展的争议，以及前民主党参议员谢罗德·布朗（Sherrod Brown）将责任推到赫斯特德身上的策略，这个原本属于摇摆州的地区可能会再次变成共和党和民主党势均力敌的战场。
Ohio has been reliably red for more than a decade. So, in theory, the race to serve the rest of Vice President JD Vance’s Senate term should be an easy win for Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to the seat in 2025. But bipartisan backlash to the state’s data center boom — and former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown’s strategy of laying the blame at Husted’s feet — could return the Buckeye State to its swing-state past.
仅在赫斯特德与布朗的参议院竞选活动中，就投入了超过1400万美元用于广告宣传——这一金额是全国所有参议院竞选活动中的六倍。几乎所有广告都针对赫斯特德，将他描绘成俄亥俄州数据中心的“代表人物”，并指责他在担任副州长期间支持为数据中心开发商提供税收优惠。
More than $14 million has been spent on data center-related ads in the Husted-Brown race alone. That is six times as much as in any other Senate race in the country. Nearly all of the ads target Husted, casting him as the “face of data centers” in Ohio and attacking him for backing tax breaks for developers when he was lieutenant governor.
共和党人对此感到担忧。据《Politico》报道，致力于维护和扩大共和党在参议院多数席位的全国共和党参议院委员会在8月份的一份备忘录中警告称，布朗的策略正在奏效，数据中心问题已成为赫斯特德的“累赘”。当MS NOW询问这一评估时，赫斯特德避而不谈。
Republicans are worried. In an August memo reported by Politico the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to protect and expand the GOP’s Senate majority, warned that Brown’s strategy was working and that data centers had become an “anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”Asked by MS NOW about that assessment, Husted sidestepped it.
“我可以告诉你们，俄亥俄州的民众很清楚：当我努力推动数据中心企业自行承担运营成本以降低电价时，查克·舒默（Chuck Schumer）和民主党人却阻挠了这一举措——这对他们来说是一个令人震惊的事实，”赫斯特德说。“他们开始质疑：‘真相到底是什么？’现在他们终于明白了真相——民主党人正在阻碍我们让数据中心企业为自身造成的成本负责。在过去一周的竞选活动中，民众的态度确实发生了转变。”
“People in Ohio, I can tell you, after I fought to make the data centers pay their own freight so that we could lower electricity prices, and Chuck Schumer and the Democrats blocked it — that has been an eye-opening piece of information to them,” he said. “Because they’re like, ‘What’s the truth?’ And now they know the truth that the Democrats are blocking our efforts to make data centers accountable, and that’s really been a shift here in the last week in the campaign.”
民主党确实在参议院休会前（10月）否决了这项名为《纳税人保护法案》的提案。他们认为该法案“毫无效力”，因为它只是要求数据中心企业考虑承担自身运营成本，而非强制他们这么做。
Democrats did block the bill, called the Ratepayer Protection Act, before the Senate left Washington for its pre-midterm October recess. They argued it was “toothless” because it only asks companies to consider paying for the costs their data centers create, rather than requiring them to.
赫斯特淡化了这一区别，在接受MS NOW采访时表示，他的立法将“迫使数据中心自行承担电力费用”。然而，他在参议院花费宝贵时间为这项立法而战的事实，恰恰说明了这一问题在家乡有多重要。这也有助于解释为什么布朗——他正试图重返参议院——为何不肯放松。
Husted glossed over that distinction, telling MS NOW his legislation would “force data centers to pay for their own power.”Still, the fact that he spent precious time in the Senate fighting for it is a telling sign of how much the issue matters back home. It also helps explain why Brown, who is trying to win his way back to the Senate, isn’t letting up.
“数据中心确实是被操控系统的一部分，”布朗说。“我一生都在与这个被操控的系统作斗争，无论是华尔街，还是石油公司，如今是科技巨头。现在这些数据中心进来了，这表明了一个更被操控的系统，因为人们根本没有发言权。当地社区对这些[中心]在做什么完全没有发言权。”贝克尔也持此观点。但她认为，两位候选人都还不够努力，因为他们正在实时寻找立场，而这一议题正在迅速重塑俄亥俄州乃至更广地区的政治格局。
“It really is part of the rigged system,” Brown says of data centers. “I’ve spent my career fighting against this rigged system, whether it’s Wall Street, whether it’s the oil companies, now whether it’s the tech boys. Now these data centers come in, and it shows an even more rigged system because people had no say whatsoever. Local communities had no input in what these [centers] are doing.”Baker agrees. But she doesn’t think either candidate is doing enough as both find their footing, in real time, on an issue that is rapidly reshaping politics in Ohio and beyond.
“我是行动派，不是空谈派，所以我认为你需要深入那些实际上正完全受到我们州所发生事情影响的地区，去和每天亲身经历这些事情的人交谈，”她说。
“I’m an action person, not a words person, so I would say you need to get down to the areas that are actually being completely affected by what’s happening in our state, and talk to the people that are living it every day,” she said.
最终，贝克尔表示，她会投票给她认为“不会侵犯我家园”的候选人。她认为那就是布朗。但她希望他在此议题上能更频繁地亮相。
In the end, Baker said, she’ll vote for the candidate she thinks “is not gonna invade my home.”She thinks that’s Brown. But she wants him to show up more on the issue.
在克利夫兰市中心，接受MS NOW采访的选民表示，他们关心数据中心，也看到了相关广告，但仍难以判断哪位候选人持何种立场。
In downtown Cleveland, voters told MS NOW they care about data centers, and have seen the ads, but can’t quite tell which candidate stands where.
“我看到这些广告，但你知道，这么多广告看久了就容易被淹没。我真的不知道谁支持数据中心，谁反对数据中心，”克利夫兰电工瑞安·查鲁克说，他表示虽然数据中心可能为他的行业带来经济利益，但这些收益无法抵消他对其环境影响的担忧。
“I see the commercials, but you know, so many of them they kind of get washed out. I really don’t know who’s for data centers and who’s against them,” said Ryan Czaruk, a Cleveland electrician who said the potential economic benefits for his trade don’t outweigh his concerns about the environmental impact.
事实上，两位候选人都持有细致入微的观点。没有哪位候选人单纯是全盘支持或全盘反对所有数据中心。两人都表示，居民理应在社区建设什么项目上拥有发言权，并应免受成本上升之苦。而且，谁都不想吓跑投资——毕竟该州从数据中心建设中将获得大量就业岗位。
In truth, both candidates have a nuanced view. Neither candidate is simply for or against all data centers. Both have said residents deserve a say in what gets built in their communities and should be protected from higher costs. And neither wants to scare off investment in a state that stands to gain plenty of jobs from data center construction.
“我要确保的是，如果这些工作机会存在，它们就是有保障的好工会工作，”布朗对 MS NOW 说。“我的意思是，你知道，电工、从事这项工作的人，他们不希望电价上涨，而电价确实在上涨。”
“I’m making sure that if these jobs are there, that they’re good union jobs and they have benefits,” Brown told MS NOW. “What I say is, you know, electricians, people doing this work, they don’t want their electricity prices going up, and they are.”
“它们能带来数十亿美元的私人投资；为电工、管道工、设备操作员和其他熟练技工带来建筑工作机会，”休斯特上个月在参议院议场上说。“但这些益处不应伴随家庭、农民和小企业电费单上隐性费用的代价。”
“They can bring billions of dollars in private investment; in construction work for electricians, pipefitters, equipment operators, and other skilled trades,” Husted said on the Senate floor last month. “But those benefits should not come with a hidden charge of electric bills for families, farmers, and small businesses.”
候选人们小心翼翼地把握分寸。特朗普总统则不然。他会见科技界领袖，赞誉数据中心为“下金蛋的鹅”，并斥责那些不想让数据中心落户社区的选民是“想要倒退和贫穷”。回到克莱蒙县，贝克深知，无论是数据中心本身，还是围绕它们的政治博弈，变革都将缓慢到来。
The candidates are treading carefully. President Donald Trump is not. He has met with tech leaders, hailed data centers as “the golden goose” and chided voters who don’t want them in their communities as “wanting to be backwards and poor.”Back in Clermont County, Baker knows change, both on data centers and in the politics around them, will come slowly.
“我希望也许我们都能开始走到一起，意识到这不是某一个党派的事，”她说。“所以我认为这次选举——甚至可能是 2028 年的总统大选，我觉得时间还不够长，不足以带来巨大的变化。但我从未在 1 月之前参加过议会会议。我从未发起过请愿，现在我却把整个流程都跑了一遍……我真没想到我身上有这股劲儿，真的没想到。所以这挺有意思的。” 对于这里的胜者而言，11 月只是漫漫长途的起点。
“I would hope that maybe we can all start coming together and realizing that it’s not one party or the other,” she said. “So I think this election — even probably, maybe the presidential election in 2028, I don’t think that it’s far enough out to have the big change. But I never went to a council meeting before January. I never circulated a petition, and now I have the whole thing…I never thought I had that in me, I really didn’t. So it’s just interesting.”For whoever wins here, November is just the start of a long road.
被问及他对参议院——一个他在其中任职18年且以在人工智能和数据中心等紧急议题上行动迟缓而闻名的机构——是否能够处理如此复杂的问题时，布朗持保留态度。“我希望如此。我不知道。”
Asked if he thought the Senate — a body in which he served for 18 years and is not known for its expeditiousness on urgent issues like AI and data centers — could tackle such a complex issue, Brown was non-committal. “I hope so. I don’t know.”
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