Inside the battle over data center development that’s quietly reshaping N.J. politics

At the February 24 meeting of the Vineland City Council, Bayly Winder, a Democratic candidate for the 2nd congressional district, stepped up to the podium to discuss what’s become a remarkably hot topic in the area: data centers. A 300-megawatt data center began construction last year on the outskirts of the city, and Winder and the dozens of other disgruntled locals who crowded the council meeting weren’t pleased.

“You’re giving big tech companies based thousands of miles away all the power and access,” Winder said. “What about the power and access here in Vineland, in South Jersey?”

When Winder floated the possibility that elected officials in Vineland or elsewhere had received money from DataOne, one of the companies behind the center, the blowback was swift. Council President Paul Spinelli forcefully insisted that neither he nor anyone else on the council had a financial stake in the matter, and later in the meeting he brought up the idea of suing Winder for slander.

But in the weeks since the city council meeting, Winder said he’s been getting a very different reaction from people across the district and around the country. One Vineland resident, a Republican, wished him luck in the data center fight; another said “I can’t believe a Democrat is holding a politician to the fire.”

Winder is one of a growing number of New Jersey politicians who have made the emerging battle over data center development a core part of their campaigns. (In fact, he’s not even the only one who’s highlighted the issue in his own Democratic primary; Tim Alexander, one of the other Democrats running for the same district, has testified before the city council in opposition to the data center as well.)

As more centers are built around the state – and as more voters begin to notice developments in their own communities – candidates like Winder and Alexander could be on the cutting edge of one of New Jersey’s most important, and still poorly understood, political issues.

According to data compiled by Climate Revolution NJ, a progressive advocacy group, and South Jersey Climate News, an environment-focused news website, around 80 data centers spanning at least 27 New Jersey municipalities are either operational or soon will be. Both have created maps tracking data center development, a tricky task when many centers are constructed and operated with minimal publicity in nondescript buildings.

The centers range in scale from small projects nestled in industrial parks to enormous developments like the Vineland center or a 250-megawatt center underway in Kenilworth. The centers are particularly clustered in certain areas of Central and North Jersey; Piscataway and Secaucus alone are home to as many as a dozen data centers each.

Data center developers, and AI proponents more broadly, have said that their projects create jobs and help support an industry that’s becoming an increasingly integral part of the American economy. Many of New Jersey’s data centers, particularly its largest projects, are specifically designed to support the ongoing AI boom in which the Garden State, long a hub for scientific research and development, is playing a key role.

Critics, however, say that the ever-increasing number of data centers is a massive environmental threat and risks hiking utility bills, already a top concern for many voters, even further. Electricity bills have skyrocketed in New Jersey in recent years, and data centers have been frequently cited as a top culprit.

“You can attribute 60% to 70% of the increase [in bills] to the infrastructure needs of these utilities for data centers,” said Ben Dziobek, the founder of Climate Revolution NJ. “You’ve got to build new lines, you’ve got to build new capacity, and a lot of the times, especially before there was a lot of scrutiny of energy sources, they were just plugging right into the grid.”

In Vineland, DataOne has said that it has no intention of making its data center a burden on local residents. At a January town hall, DataOne CEO Charles-Antoine Beyney told local residents that the center will pay for its own utility bills and use a variety of innovative technologies to make it a net-zero energy consumer.

“The original plan for this AI factory was to build a 50 megawatt one and get the power from the grid,” Beyney said in response to questions from the New Jersey Globe. “However, as the project got larger, so did our ambitions and we opted for a ‘behind the meter’ strategy, based on gas for a 300+ megawatt infrastructure. We then implemented multiple layers of technology which will help us fulfill our Net-Zero ambition.”

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis), the local congressman whom Winder and a number of other Democrats are hoping to unseat this year, said that he believes data center construction should be scrutinized and regulated, but that he’s been reassured the Vineland center will not create local headaches.

“I was concerned about energy, just trying to make sure that the people wouldn’t be hit with yet another huge energy increase because of energy usage by the data center,” Van Drew said. “They are not going to be, and that’s what I needed to hear.”

For Winder and other local skeptics, however, those reassurances haven’t been good enough. The project, they said, was rushed through without enough local input – DataOne’s town hall came more than ten months after the project was announced – or transparency about what the center will entail.

“I think the way this process has played out has been unacceptable,” Winder said. “It highlights the need to pump the brakes and ask yourself, who is benefiting? What are the risks? Where is the independent review? What will the impact be on costs?”

There is some precedent for data center proposals faltering against vociferous local opposition. In New Brunswick, Dziobek and hundreds of others packed into a city council hearing to oppose the potential development of a small data center just outside the city’s downtown; midway through the meeting, councilmembers announced that the project would be amended and the property would instead become a public park.

Dziobek said even he was taken aback by the speed and totality of the victory: “These things don’t happen this fast!”, he said. “It was electric.”

A town killing a controversial project because local residents don’t want it near their homes – not in my backyard, so to speak – is hardly a new phenomenon in New Jersey. Battles over local development have defined New Jersey politics for decades, and countless incumbent officeholders have lost re-election over the years because they approved an unpopular apartment complex or rezoning plan.

In recent years, one area of particular concern has been warehouse construction, which has swallowed up thousands of acres of land, particularly in the state’s more rural areas. Some town governments have decided to reject warehouse projects when they come up for a vote, and now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill expressed support for a warehouse development moratorium during last year’s gubernatorial campaign.

And in Roxbury Township, a battle over a planned ICE facility has developed similar faultlines. Local GOP officials have objected to the facility primarily on practical grounds, saying that it would stretch the township’s utility capacity; Democrats running for the 7th congressional district have latched onto the issue as a key argument against Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield).

The issue of data centers, though, ties into all sorts of other political debates – including the debate over the technology the projects are helping to power. During her inaugural budget address yesterday, Sherrill didn’t specifically mention data centers, but she did single out Big Tech and social media, highlighting their impact on kids’ mental health. “This isn’t just the Big Tobacco of our era – it’s worse,” the governor said.

Tech leaders also have a direct influence on politics via the donations they make and the super PACs they support. Battles over tech and AI policy have already made their way into political campaigns elsewhere in America – across the river in Manhattan, the Democratic primary for an open House seat has essentially become a war between competing AI industry groups – and they could easily come to New Jersey next.

“The tech oligarchs: where are they engaging? Where are they spending money? Why do they want influence there?” Dziobek said. “Let’s not act like Big Tech is not being strategic in trying to get what they want out of this.”

Last month, a pro-AI regulation super PAC backed by the AI startup Anthropic began airing ads urging Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly), who is on a glide path to re-election, to “stand strong for AI safeguards.” Upcoming Democratic primaries in the 7th and 12th congressional districts, as well as a barnburner general election against Kean in the former, could provide AI groups with more openings to get involved.

But while money from AI groups may provide pro-AI candidates with an advantage, some on the opposite side of the battle say that politicians interested in their own political future should come out forcefully against data center expansion. Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (D-Franklin), whose Central Jersey district includes more than a dozen already-operational data centers as well as the scuttled New Brunswick proposal, said that he wants Democrats to take a stand against Big Tech, which he called “a party of the wealthy.”

“We want to pick our battles and pick our fights,” Danielsen said. “My constituents absolutely insist on a fighter representing them, and to fight for fairness against the wealthy is a great fight.”

Danielsen is one of the lead sponsors on a bill moving through the state legislature that would require data centers to shoulder more responsibility for the cost of the electricity they use. The bill, Danielsen, is just one step of many that the Democratic majority in Trenton hopes to take to curb and regulate development: “We’re going to need probably half-dozen to a dozen bills,” he said.

Some prior data center-related bills however, have struggled to make their way into law. Last year, legislation requiring data centers to report water and electricity usage to the Board of Public Utilities was conditionally vetoed by then-Gov. Phil Murphy, and the legislature never passed an amended version. (Murphy did, however, sign a separate bill directing the BPU to study the effects of data centers on electricity costs.)

Of course, many of the most relevant fights over data center construction happen at the local level, where the media and the general public is often not looking closely. And even some municipal officials profess to have minimal control over whether or not development takes place in their town; Spinelli, the Vineland council president, said at last month’s meeting that because the local data center is being built on private property, the council had little say and anger at them is “misplaced.”

Then there’s the prospect of federal intervention, something that even President Donald Trump has proposed in order to lower utility costs. Van Drew and Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch), whose district includes New Brunswick, both said they think congressional action is a good idea; Pallone, who’s in line to chair the House Energy & Commerce Committee if Democrats retake the House majority this year, may be in a position to make that happen.

“We’re definitely taking it up on our committee,” Pallone said. “There’s a lot of concern on the committee, and there have been bills introduced because of our concern that they increase costs for homeowners and the environmental concerns.”

Whether a continually fractious Congress will be able to agree on a course of action on such a fraught issue, though, remains to be seen, especially given the looming influence of pro-AI super PACs. But for candidates around the country like Winder, there’s nothing to lose by taking on the data center boogeyman – and, as voters grow increasingly engaged and enraged, potentially everything to gain.

“I’ve gotten messages from people all over the country, people in places like Independence, Missouri, where they’re dealing with their own data center fight,” Winder said. “This is something that is not about one place, not about one county – it’s everywhere.”