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Though the democratic socialist was defeated, the fight against the data centers she opposed isn’t going anywhere.

By Jessica Washington, The Intercept

Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong’s narrow defeat in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday night wasn’t just a stinging blow to the left — it marks a political loss for a nonpartisan anti-data center movement that has been picking up significant steam across the country.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley beat the odds to eke out a victory by less than a percentage point on election night, a surprise upset after Crowley, who would be Wisconsin’s first Black governor if he wins in November, dropped out of the race and then re-entered with the support of outgoing Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.

The race became dominated in the final days by inane issues like whether Hong believed that Thanksgiving should exist, based on old tweets criticizing the holiday, echoing and accelerating the annual Fox News “War on Christmas” panic. The sudden fury over old tweets was a distraction from a concrete issue that Hong had made a key focus of her public talking points and likely drove her surge in popularity: data centers.

Hong’s campaign repeatedly emphasized that she was the only candidate in the race to support a data center moratorium, which would pause construction of any new data centers, giving the state time to create regulations and study their environmental and energy impact. The moratorium would not extend to data center projects already underway in the state.

“It’s time to press control+alt+delete to put a stop to this AI data center crisis, a full moratorium until we have the new regulations we need to protect our energy costs, our economy, our environment,” Hong said in a campaign video.

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