Democrat Gina Hinojosa accused Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday of selling out Texans on data centers in exchange for millions of dollars in campaign cash as a rebellion against the industry that manufactures artificial intelligence spilled into the Texas Capitol at a long and contentious committee hearing.
Hinojosa - an Austin state lawmaker who's running close behind the incumbent Republicans in recent polls on the gubernatorial race - sought to capitalize on the data center furor with a new television advertisement that's patterned on answers that AI provides in response to questions in searches on Google and other sites. The Democrat's 30-second commercial pins the blame on Abbott for rising electricity bills - contending the governor reaped campaign contributions worth $20 million from the data center industry in exchange for billions of dollars in tax breaks to accelerate the industry's development in Texas.
A fierce public backlash over data centers that he'd promoted and encouraged to set up shops has given Texas Democrats a potential weapon of mass destruction to use against the governor as an explosive issue his campaign failed to anticipate until it was too late. But data centers and their drain on the state's power and water supplies is not the only major subject that Abbott and the Republicans were not prepared to tackle when forced on the defensive in the past several months.
The Texas Republicans handed the Democrats two other smoking guns for the midterm elections with an off-again, on-again prohibition on THC products and their collective silence for months on the construction of a border wall on the edge of Big Bend National Park. U.S. Senate contender James Talarico, Hinojosa and other Democrats in competitive races have been major beneficiaries of GOP leaders' actions and inaction on cannabis and the Big Bend border barrier at a time when Abbott and his allies here are grasping for ways to respond and to counter.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton - the U.S. Senate nominee for the GOP - has been unprepared for questions on THC, the border wall and data centers that were inevitable with Talarico seizing in maximum fashion on all three subjects while his Republican foe has stumbled in the face of questions on them. Paxton as an example claimed in response last week to a question on a revived THC ban that he was unaware of the details despite the fact he'd been defending and seeking to enforce the state's hemp laws in the courts for the past seven years.
Abbott arguably is the most vulnerable on data centers after promoting and encouraging their establishment in the nation's second largest state with promises of lower taxes and other perks if they set up shop here. But the brouhaha over data centers is putting all of the Texas Republicans in the most competitive races on the midterm ballot in considerable danger at a time their fates could depend more than ever on the success or failure of the GOP's candidates in the races for the U.S. and the governor's office.
The explosive issues that caught the Republicans off guard are pouring fuel into a fire that President Donald Trump is causing the GOP in Texas and beyond with approval ratings that have been parked for months at all-time lows for months. Trump's seemingly-endless war in Iran that's had gasoline prices at record highs since he started it six months ago is hurting the Republicans' chances in Texas along with an affordability crisis that Abbott, Paxton and the Republicans here ignored until it blew up this year.
The State Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday on data centers and a $33 billion high-powered transmission line that will tie them together provided some serious fireworks from the time it began Wednesday morning and continued throughout the afternoon and possibly into the night. The Texas governor was a popular target for data center opponents who've been outraged by them the most in rural areas that are heavily Republican.
A story in Politico on Wednesday raised the specter that Abbott's re-election could be in jeopardy as a consequence of the uproar over data centers in rural Texas. The governor has sought to create the appearance of cracking down on data centers based on a pause that he asked state regulators at ERCOT to implement on new connections by the AI industry to the Texas power grid. But several major Texas cities are not in the ERCOT system so the temporary freeze would not apply data centers in those areas.
Hinojosa said Abbott's newfound position for reining in data centers is a ruse designed to cover his tracks until after the midterm vote in November. “Greg Abbott is messaging different, but his actions are the same," the Democratic challenger said in an interview on MS NOW. "He’s basically auditing himself… Everybody knows that come November 4th, the day after the election, he’ll sing a new song.”
Abbott and the Republicans here have walked a tightrope on data centers in light of the fact that Trump has been their most vocal advocate. "They are tremendously important for the economics. I mean, for Texas to say no to data centers is a mistake in the sense that it could be bigger than oil...and there are a lot of communities that want them," the president said on Tuesday. "But more importantly - .there are a lot of countries that want them."
Data center industry officials and supporters argue that they're desperately needed for the U.S. to keep pace with China in the development of technology on which national security could depend in the future.
more to come ...
North Texans are standing up to Big Tech.
This Sunday, I'll be in Wichita Falls for the North Texas Data Center Debate to talk about what unchecked data center development means for our water, electric grid, farmland, and communities.
