Dana Hanson, center, an organizer for We Are Mercer County, sits in the crowd listening to the Mercer County Fiscal Court during a Sept. 28 meeting. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Liam Niemeyer)
Dana Hanson has seen plenty of political divisiveness on the news and social media in recent years. And up until about a year ago, the Mercer County resident who had voted for Republicans “her entire life” had viewed politics as two-sided — the left versus the right.
But over the past several months, as she and other residents have organized in opposition to a proposed hyperscale data center in her rural Central Kentucky county, she hasn’t noticed that partisan division among her neighbors.
“I don’t see it anymore. I don’t see it. I don’t see it from the people I surround myself with,” Hanson said. “I definitely think that there’s been like a little bit of a kumbaya moment here, and not just in Mercer County — I think throughout the country.”
Hanson is one of the organizers with the nonprofit group We Are Mercer County, whose members have pushed back with strong concerns — over the use of farmland, environmental and utility bill impacts — about a proposed hyperscale data center near the small Mercer County city of Burgin. The group of residents began to coalesce after the county planning and zoning commission began crafting regulations seeking to regulate where the power-intensive operations could locate; county leaders rejected those regulations earlier this month.
But before she helped form the group, she didn’t care or tune into Burgin city council meetings, let alone care that much about local politics. The data center issue has since had people packing into the Burgin’s firehouse and Mercer County fiscal court meetings, holding homemade signs and wearing blue “We Are Mercer County” shirts.
Kentucky does not yet have hyperscale data centers operating in the state; unlike the massive scale seen in other states such as Ohio and Virginia, technology companies have poured billions of dollars into building infrastructure, in part to support artificial intelligence services. But at least one hyperscale data center is under construction in West Louisville, and other proposals are progressing — with litigation in some instances trying to stop the projects.
For some Kentuckians, particularly those dealing with active data center proposals, the issue has been galvanizing. Whether it will sway voters at the ballot box this fall, in Mercer County and beyond, remains to be seen for Hanson.
She said a lot of people in her county, where she’s lived since 2018, don’t like to talk about politics and won’t put out yard signs.
Hanson, who changed her registration from Republican to Independent in 2022, also said a lot of people won’t cross party lines this fall, in a county where the majority of the registered voters and the incumbents in county government are Republicans.
“This started with a data center, and it’s turned into something way bigger than just a data center. It’s about transparency and accountability, and how elected officials treat the people they’re supposed to represent,” Hanson said.
At a data center “listening session” hosted earlier this month by Lexington Democrat Rep. Adam Moore in Frankfort earlier this month, it wasn’t just Kentuckians from Mercer County who came to a committee room to levy their data center concerns.
More than 60 Kentuckians from at least 15 counties, from Daviess County to Pike County, came to the meeting. A common theme of their comments: accountability of elected officials.
Christy Collins of Breckinridge County told the handful of Democratic state lawmakers and one Republican that her fears extended to the potential of artificial intelligence, saying that “they want us to sacrifice our way of life so they can train AI to replace human workers and collect our data.”
“We are here today to protect our future and ready to vote any elected leader out of office if they refuse to protect our lands,” Collins said. “I say our land is worth more than their data, and we, the people of this commonwealth, have the right to vote no on data centers.”
Politicians running for office at all levels of government are paying attention, particularly as polling has shown public approval of data centers has plummeted — one poll showing that more than six in ten Americans strongly oppose a new data center being built where they live.
In the closely watched race in Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Mercer County, Democrat Zach Dembo and Republican Ralph Alvarado have used the issue as fodder for attacks. Dembo has accused Alvarado of having investments in data center stocks, and Alvarado has suggested Dembo is collecting “campaign checks” from a contractor involved in data center construction.
In a recent television debate, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Charles Booker charged Republican candidate Andy Barr of “getting paid by the telecom companies” that want data centers “in your backyard.” Barr said he didn’t believe Kentuckians should pay higher utility bills because of data centers and that he believed in “local control”. But he also said the country needed to win the “AI race”, echoing rhetoric from President Donald Trump in support of data centers.
One social media post from Trump, warning that data center critics would end up “backwards and poor” if they rejected data centers, saw bipartisan backlash in Kentucky including from state Rep. Savannah Maddox, R-Dry Ridge.
Maddox told the Lantern that the Trump administration’s advocacy for data centers has caused Kentuckians to be “somewhat skeptical, if not concerned outright, for the impact that data centers could have on their communities.”
“We do not need a top-heavy approach, a propaganda arm, if you will, pushing data centers on people and saying that you’re not patriotic if you don’t support them,” Maddox said. “What I am seeing here on the ground, not just in my district but across the Commonwealth, is that data centers have mobilized voters. And I think that they have gotten them paying attention in a way that they maybe previously would not have.”
Stephen Voss, an associate professor within the University of Kentucky’s Department of Political Science, compared the “nuisance” of data centers to political science research that shows the closer wind energy farms are to people, the more “backlash against elected leaders” there would be.
“Voters do punish these nuisances that come with these developments, and that, to me, is something similar,” Voss said.
But Voss said he believed the impact of data centers to push broader political movements remains limited outside of communities actively dealing with data center proposals. He said that is until people “really started getting hammered” in their pocketbooks, like through high utility bills.
In Mercer County, the local focus on data centers has become apparent in some races.
Republican state Rep. Kim King, who represents Mercer County, in a 30-second reelection advertisement began with the statement that she was “holding big tech and data centers” accountable. King had voted for a Republican-sponsored bill that sought to ratepayer protections against data centers, but the bill died on the last day of this year’s legislative session.
She’s facing a rematch against Democratic opponent Katrina Sexton, a Mercer County school teacher who King defeated by more than 40 percentage points in 2024. Earlier this year, a member of We Are Mercer County also accused King of dismissing local data center concerns; King did not respond to emailed interview requests from the Lantern.
Hanson, one of the group’s organizers, said she is “cautiously optimistic” about election day. The group itself doesn’t make endorsements as a nonprofit.
“I’m hopeful that the people of Mercer County have seen enough, and had enough, and taken enough,” Hanson said. “A lot of people will not cross party lines, and I get that. But there’s going to be a lot of people who are, and if that’s what it takes to get better leadership, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
