Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, pushed back Friday against concerns that data centers are driving up electricity costs, defending the Trump administration’s energy agenda during a visit to a southwestern Ohio steel mill with Vice President JD Vance. The appearance comes as Republicans privately worry that growing voter anxiety over data centers could jeopardize Husted’s seat in November.
Husted’s comments follow a Tuesday memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), obtained by CNBC and first reported by Axios, which flagged data centers as a “sleeper issue” this election cycle. The memo warned that if voter perceptions of data centers are not “fixed quickly,” the backlash could spread well beyond Ohio.
Ohio hosts several large data center projects, including a proposed 10-gigawatt campus in Pike County with an estimated price tag of more than $500 billion. But Husted argued that rising electricity costs stem from Democratic energy policies, not the data centers themselves.
“You want to have lower electricity prices — I want to tell you why they’re rising. Because Congress and, under the Obama administration, under the Biden administration, they closed 23 power plants in the state of Ohio, representing half the electricity we use on a daily basis,” Husted said at the Cleveland-Cliffs steel plant in Middletown. “Radical climate policies did that.”
Political stakes
Recent polling shows Husted narrowly trailing former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in his bid for reelection. The seat is considered critical for Republicans hoping to maintain their Senate majority in the next Congress, even though the GOP is widely favored to keep control of the chamber.
Party concerns have grown amid falling approval ratings for President Donald Trump, rising inflation, the ongoing Iran war, and the mounting data center anxieties. The NRSC memo specifically pointed to the risk that data center opposition could expand into a broader campaign issue in other states.
Husted was joined at the Middletown event by Vance and other GOP candidates, including Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor in a close race against Democrat Amy Acton.
Manufacturing investment touted
Husted used the appearance to highlight the Trump administration’s manufacturing investment in Ohio, including a $500 million Department of Energy grant to Cleveland-Cliffs. The grant, initially awarded under the Biden administration for a hydrogen-powered furnace at the Middletown facility, will now be redirected to other upgrades, including improvements to the blast furnace and artificial intelligence technologies.
Cleveland-Cliffs said it will match the DOE funding, bringing total investment in the facility to $1 billion. The company stated the project would employ more than 1,500 workers during construction.
“We can bring back manufacturing to this great country, in places like Middletown and across our great state,” Husted said. “And why is it important that we do this? Investments like this, a billion-dollar investment right here? Because it’s job security, it’s economic security, it’s national security.”
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/21/jon-husted-data-centers-ohio-senate.html
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