Anti-Data-Center Movement Is Reshaping Michigan Politics

Will Lawrence is one of the founders of the Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy group. Now, he’s running for Congress in the state of Michigan, one of the nation’s fastest growing caucuses. suspension of data center development.

Senator Bernie Sanders said they accepted himnaming Lawrence as someone who “will want real accountability for big technology and AI companies.” And the back to the data centerLawrence says, it’s helping him understand rural resistance to another type of big industry project in the state: renewable energy.

Lawrence’s campaign sees the data center as a powerful topic to galvanize voters on its side in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 7th district, which will be held in August. An internal survey by Data for Progress of likely Democratic voters in the state shared with WIRED shows that more than 40 percent of respondents were “very likely” to vote for someone who opposes data centers. The message also had a strong impact on respondents aged 45: Almost 80 percent of young voters said they would be more likely to support anti-data. (District 7 includes the college town of Ingham.)

The data center “definitely (wasn’t) an issue I expected to talk about on the campaign trail,” Lawrence told WIRED. Voters, he says, began approaching him at town halls and other meetings after he announced his candidacy last summer, asking for his advice as a longtime planner on how to turn the power of anti-data among their neighbors into something productive.

He said: “People feel that they are being insulted by the companies and the local authorities who are welcoming them to the town.”

A Data for Progress poll ranked Lawrence ahead of all of his opponents in the primary. Another study to be sent is one of his opponents and was released in April showing that Lawrence won the primary, although it also showed that the majority of voters did not decide. Lawrence is also a distant third in fundraising.

There are at least 11 data centers organized throughout Michiganaccording to the powerful cleaning database Cleanview. A major backlog in two towns in the seventh district has halted two projects planned for the past year. But data center developers have found countermeasures elsewhere in the state. After the 6th Ward town voted against Oracle’s data center earlier this year, the company sued, and the town allowed development to begin rather than fight the expensive lawsuits in court.

Earlier this month, the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, appeared at the opening of the Oracle data center, where she was photographed smiling next to OpenAI’s Sam Altman and praising the $16 billion investment.

“Anybody worth their weight knows that these data centers are dangerous,” says Cooper Teboe, a Democratic pollster in California. Fans who don’t realize this, Teboe says, “are not competitive winners.”

Christy McGillivray, executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a Michigan-based democratic reform organization, said Whitmer’s appearance at the inauguration was a big mistake for the governor, who has been floated as a 2028 presidential contender.

“It blew my mind,” he said. “I was like, ‘Are you trying to hurt the entire Democratic Party?’

While on the campaign trail, Lawrence says she’s met protesters with whom she disagrees politically. This included opponents of data center construction who also opposed solar and wind projects built on farms.

Michigan is a state that refuses to reject renewable energy projects. In 2025 comments ranks it as the state with the largest number of local bans: More than 60 states in Michigan passed laws, restrictions, or other restrictions on wind and solar development between 2011 and 2024. Local opposition, the report found, had halted or banned at least 28 projects across the state.