David Crowley promised Act 10 repeal, a BadgerCare option and universal pre-K in his first 30 days. A shrinking budget balance, a lost federal Medicaid bonus and a one-vote Senate cushion stand in the way.
David Crowley will be Wisconsin's first Black governor, with 18-15 and 53-46 majorities behind him. Bargaining rights, BadgerCare and school money top a long Democratic list, while two new constitutional amendments narrow the field.
Crowley carried Brown County, reportedly the first Democrat to do so since 1982, while Brandy Tollefson flipped the 88th and Green Bay's $158 million referendum passed. Gillett, Pulaski and Seymour voters said no.
Wisconsin Voters Sour on Data Centers as Crowley and Tiffany Fight Over Who'd Rein Them In
Three in four Wisconsin voters now say data centers cost more than they're worth. Both candidates for governor are running against the industry's tax break, while towns from Greenleaf to Mishicot have already fought developers on their own.
Three in four Wisconsin voters now say large data centers cost more than they're worth, and both men running for governor have spent the fall campaign promising to make the industry pay its own way. The fight over those projects is no longer hypothetical in Northeast Wisconsin, where residents and local officials in Brown and Manitowoc counties have already pushed one developer out and put others on hold.
A national fight that's mostly in Republican states
A CBS News analysis published Monday found 75% of data centers under construction and 80% of those in planning sit in predominantly Republican states, citing figures from Cleanview Research. Campaigns have spent $45 million this year on ads that mention data centers, most of it attacking them, according to AdImpact data CBS reported. President Trump has backed the build-out and dismissed local opposition, while some Republicans, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have paused permits and grid hookups.
Wisconsin, a swing state, has its own share. Its biggest projects are Microsoft's $20 billion complex in Mount Pleasant, the $15 billion Vantage, OpenAI and Oracle campus in Port Washington, and a $1 billion Meta center in Beaver Dam, according to Wisconsin Watch's running tally. A draft state report projects peak electricity demand rising 40% by 2032, with those three projects accounting for nearly three-quarters of the growth.
Two candidates, one target
The tax break is where Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley have drawn their lines. Republican lawmakers wrote a sales and use tax exemption for data centers into the 2023-25 state budget and Gov. Tony Evers signed it. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated it could cost the state more than $2 billion in forgone revenue, WPR reported.
Tiffany's campaign launched an ad Aug. 17 calling his opponent "data center David Crowley." It leaned on a July questionnaire in which Crowley said the state shouldn't "automatically roll back" the incentives, and left out his call for a more rigorous review. At a July 29 town hall, Crowley said Wisconsin shouldn't subsidize the industry "to the tune of $1.5 billion," and he wants incentives tied to renewable energy, labor standards and water-use reporting. His campaign accused Tiffany of lying about his record.
In interviews with FOX 11 this month, Tiffany said there should be "no data centers unless we get rid of the subsidies," along with no nondisclosure agreements, no conversion of productive farmland and no higher electric rates for current customers. Crowley said big tech's "free ride" in Wisconsin would end and that communities that don't want a data center "shouldn't be forced to have a data center."
Both men have also praised the industry. A Wisconsin Watch fact check found Crowley once said Wisconsin could become "an AI and a data hub" for the world, and Tiffany called data centers "exciting new technology" in January after voting in December 2025 for a House bill to speed permitting for AI infrastructure. UW-Madison political scientist Barry Burden told WPR the candidates' positions aren't far apart, and that this is the first election in which data centers are a top-of-mind issue for voters.
Who pays for the power
Electric bills are the other front. Clean Wisconsin estimates a single 1-gigawatt AI data center can use as much power as a million Wisconsin homes. In April, the Public Service Commission approved We Energies' special rate for very large customers with changes sought by intervenors. According to Clean Wisconsin, one of those intervenors, regulators lowered the threshold from 500 megawatts to 100, made the rate mandatory above that size and struck an option that would have let the utility assign 25% of new power plant costs to other customers. The Legislature adjourned its 2025-26 session without passing any data center bill, including an Assembly-passed limit on charging general ratepayers for data center electricity.
Meanwhile, We Energies has filed plans for a 750-megawatt gas plant in the village of Wrightstown, the Fox North Energy Center. The utility hasn't said whether it would serve a data center, and it hasn't released a cost estimate.
Northeast Wisconsin towns moved first
Local governments here didn't wait for Madison. In January, Houston-based Cloverleaf Infrastructure dropped plans in Greenleaf and the town of Wrightstown after residents objected to unsolicited land offers of $50,000 to $120,000 an acre made through a Delaware company, Bear Creek DevCo LLC. Cloverleaf had also approached landowners in Two Creeks, according to that town's board chair, in a corner of Manitowoc County near the Point Beach nuclear plant.
Two Creeks, Two Rivers and Mishicot asked for a pause, and the Manitowoc County Board unanimously approved an 18-month moratorium in April. On Sept. 29, county staff introduced a 24-page draft ordinance that would cap data center sites under 500 acres, allow no more than 100 acres of farmland to be converted and require water, wastewater, air quality and backup power plans. The county will post the draft for public comment before a hearing and board vote, which haven't been scheduled.
Brown County went the other way. Its Planning, Development and Transportation Committee declined in June to consider a countywide moratorium because every town, village and city in the county writes its own zoning, which leaves the county without authority to block a project. Supervisor Christopher Welch withdrew the proposal, and decisions stay with individual municipalities.
Voters choose a governor Nov. 3. Whoever wins inherits the sales tax exemption, the PSC's pending gas plant reviews and a Legislature that won't take up data center bills again until January 2027.
David Crowley promised Act 10 repeal, a BadgerCare option and universal pre-K in his first 30 days. A shrinking budget balance, a lost federal Medicaid bonus and a one-vote Senate cushion stand in the way.
David Crowley will be Wisconsin's first Black governor, with 18-15 and 53-46 majorities behind him. Bargaining rights, BadgerCare and school money top a long Democratic list, while two new constitutional amendments narrow the field.
Crowley carried Brown County, reportedly the first Democrat to do so since 1982, while Brandy Tollefson flipped the 88th and Green Bay's $158 million referendum passed. Gillett, Pulaski and Seymour voters said no.
More than a dozen area districts are asking voters Tuesday to exceed state revenue limits or borrow. Three of them lost in April and came back with smaller requests, and Green Bay's $158 million ask is the largest in the state.
