Wisconsin governor race: Democratic candidates discuss data centers

MILWAUKEE - Data centers have caused controversy as proposals pop up around Wisconsin. A town hall on Wednesday allowed candidates for Wisconsin governor to share their plans and views on data centers, as voting is already underway in the primary for governor.

Big tech is bringing big money to Wisconsin. Microsoft is building data centers in Mount Pleasant. It estimated an investment of $7 billion. In Port Washington – Vantage Data Centers, Oracle and Open AI are partnering on a $15 billion campus.

Town hall

What we know:

At a town hall hosted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at Milwaukee’s Turner Hall, candidates for governor answered questions about data centers.

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The first question asked how the candidates would make sure Wisconsin doesn’t miss out on this business boom. All said they wanted guardrails in place.

What they're saying:

"Without any guardrails in place, there should be no new data center construction. Communities have largely stepped up and opposed data center construction, and if a community says no, then the answer should be no," said former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

"What's happened over the last two years since Wisconsin got into the data center business is that it truly has been the wild west. And so, if we are going to have data centers, we need to ensure that they have the appropriate guardrails on them environmentally, around who builds it, around who pays for it, which is none of us here, and that there will never be a situation where there are non-disclosure agreements so that these things go and they're fully baked before anybody in the community knows about them," said former Wisconsin Department of Administration secretary Joel Brennan.

"We're going to need a governor who can actually bring investments here to the state of Wisconsin. Who is singing from the literally yelling from the mountaintops about what we have to offer here in the state of Wisconsin. We have to protect ourselves and make sure that local units of government have the ability to amend and stop these if they don't want them," said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.

"I think it's important to avoid getting fox-conned again, I think that the metrics have to be there. And when it comes, especially to workforce, that I don't want us to govern by promises to make sure that these are good union jobs. And I think we have a fiscal responsibility to steward taxpayer dollars to both short-term and long-term economic and public good," said State Representative Francesca Hong.

"I think there's incredible promise with technology to make people's lives better. But under no circumstances should the power of the government and certainly our public wealth be used to subsidize the most powerful, wealthy corporations in the history of the world. They need to play by our rules. They need to benefit us and not the other way around. That's going to be my philosophy," said State Sen. Kelda Roys.

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Republican candidate U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany was invited, but his campaign told FOX6 News he had a campaign event at the same time. Like the Democrats, he also called for local communities to have the final say, to end taxpayer subsidies for data centers, and that costs for the data centers be covered by the facilities, not other Wisconsinites.

Data centers have been losing support in Wisconsin. The Marquette poll has been asking about the issue since the fall of 2025, when more than half the state was skeptical about data centers. That has grown. This month the Marquette poll found 76% said the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits.

Portions of this article were formatted using A.I. FOX6’s Jason Calvi and an editor reviewed it for accuracy and tone prior to publishing.

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