Michigan’s Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mike Rogers has come out for a one-year statewide moratorium on new data center construction, a reversal from his position a month earlier and the latest sign that opposition to AI infrastructure has crossed party lines heading into the midterms.
Rogers said he supports “a one-year moratorium on new data centers until we establish a fair, transparent approval process that puts local communities first,” according to E&E News by Politico. He specified the pause should be a state policy rather than a federal ban, citing the need to “protect community control, prevent utility price hikes, protect our water and stop pay-to-play schemes.”
In July, Rogers had taken the opposite view, arguing that communities wanting data centers should be able to allow them and that residents willing to host the facilities should receive a direct benefit.
“I think we need to take a pause, probably, and make sure that we’re answering all the questions that people have,” Rogers said, per the Washington Examiner.
A bipartisan turn against the sector
Rogers’s Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, has called for halting data center development until federal regulations are in place, framing it as a question of “terms of engagement.” He has pushed for strict new standards on grid, water and community impacts rather than a blanket moratorium, and responded to Rogers’s shift with skepticism.
The convergence is the notable part. Republican candidates have increasingly adopted anti-data center messaging: Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., centered a gubernatorial campaign advertisement on opposition to the facilities. Internal National Republican Senatorial Committee communications warned that data centers’ popularity has fallen sharply, according to the Washington Examiner, and a Politico/Public First poll in July found declining support for AI hubs across demographic groups.
New York became the first state to enact a yearlong moratorium, under Gov. Kathy Hochul.
What it means
For developers and the investors financing them, a statewide moratorium is a materially different risk than the county-level restrictions that have proliferated this year. Local moratoriums push projects to the next jurisdiction; a state pause removes an entire market from the pipeline for its duration and, more importantly, signals that site selection now carries political risk that cannot be diversified away within state lines.
Michigan has been actively courting data center investment, which makes a moratorium proposal from a statewide Republican nominee a meaningful shift in the political baseline the industry has been underwriting against. Whether any moratorium is actually enacted depends on the Legislature and the outcome of the November election β Rogers is a candidate, not a sitting state policymaker, and cannot implement the pause himself.
RealtyWire’s read is that the risk premium on speculative data center land is rising faster in politically contested states than the sector’s demand fundamentals would suggest. That is analysis, not an established market effect; site-level power availability still drives most siting decisions.
The reversal fits a broader pattern of governments moving to constrain or extract more from data center development. Virginia has ordered data centers to pay for dedicated transmission infrastructure, and communities and statehouses nationwide have adopted moratoriums and new restrictions. Some operators have moved to defuse the backlash directly, as with Meta’s $1 billion fund for data center host communities.
