Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown campaigned in Toledo this weekend, hammering Republican Sen. Jon Husted over data centers and the economy just days before early voting begins across Ohio.
Brown has branded Husted “the face of data centers,” arguing Husted championed massive tax breaks for tech companies as lieutenant governor while local communities got little say. Brown wants data centers to pay their own electricity costs and opposes what he calls “out-of-control tax giveaways.” A National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned this summer that data centers could be “the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck” in the toss-up race.
Husted is pushing the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require large-load data centers to cover the power costs they create, a bill President Trump endorsed at Saturday’s Vandalia rally. Neither candidate supports a statewide moratorium on data centers. With about $7 million in anti-data-center messaging already spent in Ohio, the issue has become one of the defining fights of a Senate race that could decide control of the chamber.