Sen Bernie Moreno warns of data center backlash impacting Ohio Senate race
Sen. Bernie Moreno discusses how the rapid expansion of massive data centers in Ohio could impact the upcoming midterm elections. While Vice President JD Vance touts these facilities as essential for powering the American artificial intelligence boom, Moreno warns local communities could raise concerns over energy grid strains. Moreno analyzes the political fallout and the critical AI race against China.
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FIRST ON FOX: Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is targeting Republican Sen. Jon Husted over Ohio’s growing data center industry in a new campaign ad that features a facility owned by Google — whose corporate PAC and lobbyists have contributed thousands of dollars to Brown’s campaigns.
The Sept. 4 ad features an Ohioan blaming Husted for spearheading “the push to bring data centers to Ohio” and linking their expansion to “higher electric bills.”
The facility featured in the ad, which opened in Lancaster in 2023, is owned by Google.
Campaign finance records reviewed by Digital show Google’s corporate PAC contributed $20,000 to Brown over his political career. Brown also received thousands of dollars from individuals who lobby for Google, including two whose firms have worked on permitting, grid reliability and energy affordability issues.
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Google’s data center in Lancaster, Ohio, is at the center of former Sen. Sherrod Brown’s latest campaign ad as questions are raised about past campaign contributions from Google. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images ; Mikala Compton/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
“Apparently Google is terrible enough to put in a campaign attack ad, but perfectly acceptable when the political contributions are coming in,” Mehek Cooke, a GOP strategist and attorney in Ohio, said in a statement to Digital. “That is the contradiction Brown needs to answer. If Google’s Lancaster investment is so bad for Ohio, why was Google political money acceptable to Sherrod Brown?”
Among the contributors are Google lobbyist Lisa Kountoupes, who donated $3,500 in March, and Google lobbyist Michael D. Smith, who donated a total of $10,200 to Brown since 2017, according to Federal Election Commission records. The contributions were made to Friends of Sherrod Brown, Brown’s principal campaign committee.
Kountoupes’s firm, Kountoupes Denham Carr & Reid, was hired by Google in December to lobby on “issues related to permitting reform” tied to the company’s data center needs, Politico previously reported. Smith’s firm, Cornerstone Government Affairs, reported lobbying for Google on “issues related to permitting reform for grid reliability and energy affordability,” according to federal lobbying filings.
FEC records show Brown also received a combined $6,000 over the past decade from three additional Google lobbyists.
In a statement to Digital, Lauren Chou, a spokeswoman for Brown’s campaign, highlighted Brown’s opposition to Ohio’s data center expansion, saying Husted “led the charge,” but did not address Brown’s past campaign contributions.
“Husted is a ‘chief reason’ Ohio has 226 data centers and is ‘the face of data centers’ in Ohio,” Chou wrote. “Ohioans shouldn’t be forced to subsidize these costs and Ohioans – not Jon Husted and his billionaire friends – should get to decide if data centers are built in their community.”
Cooke accused Brown of acting like his “Google relationship in Washington does not count,” calling it “Jekyll-and-Hyde politics.”
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Senator Jon Husted, a Republican from Ohio, during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025. (Getty Images)
“For nearly five decades, Brown has sold himself as the plaid-shirt, working-class populist,” she said. “He lost in 2024, and now he is back running the same playbook: say one thing to Ohioans while his Washington record tells a very different story.”
Brown, who is seeking to return to the U.S. Senate in the high-stakes race against Husted, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006 before losing his reelection bid in 2024 to Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio.
But this isn’t the first time Brown’s comeback campaign has faced questions over conflicting positions.
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The COL4 AI-ready data center is located on a seven-acre campus at the convergence point of long-haul fiber and regional carrier fiber networks on July 24, 2025, in Columbus, Ohio. (Eli Hiller/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In 2015, Brown celebrated the construction of an Amazon data center in central Ohio, saying in a press release the new facility “is great news for New Albany and central Ohio.”
Despite his public praise, Brown has become an outspoken critic of Ohio’s growing number of data centers, a defining issue in Ohio politics ahead of the midterms. President Donald Trump has pushed to expand the facilities, warning that communities that block them would “end up being backwards and poor.”
But Cooke said this about more than one local data center.
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“America is in a global race for AI, computing capacity and energy infrastructure,” she said. “China is not slowing down because American politicians discovered that attacking data centers makes a convenient campaign commercial.”
In a statement to Digital, Husted campaign spokesperson Amy Natoce said that Brown failed Ohio families during his 32 years in Washington and is “once again resorting to lies instead of facing his abysmal record head-on. “
“The House overwhelmingly passed Sen. Husted’s bipartisan legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use, but Senate Democrats blocked it,” Natoce said. “Sherrod Brown and his friends would rather play politics and stick Ohio families with higher electric bills than pass a commonsense solution. It’s despicable.”
