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J. Stuart Adams, president of the Utah State Senate and one of the most powerful Republican officials in the state, lost his primary election on Wednesday after backing the Stratos data center development in Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley. Adams had supported the project in his role leading the state authority that approved early plans. Voters chose a challenger who ran in part on opposing the development.

The same vote cost others their seats. Box Elder County Commissioner Lee Perry lost his own primary. “Do I think that the data center vote cost me the election? Yes I do,” Perry told reporters after conceding.

What Stratos Is

The Stratos project is a proposed data center campus near the Great Salt Lake, described as one of the largest data center developments planned anywhere in the world. Backed by Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary, it would span tens of thousands of acres in Hansel Valley. At full buildout, Stratos would require up to 9 gigawatts of power — more electricity than the entire state of Utah currently consumes. O’Leary has indicated willingness to scale the project down, but the original figures drove the political backlash.

The Polling Numbers

The Utah results are not an isolated outlier. They coincide with surveys showing national opposition to local data center construction has moved from a minority position to a majority one.

• 57% of Americans say they would oppose a data center being built in their community (Reuters/Ipsos, June 2026). Only 14% would be comfortable living near one.
• ~70% of Americans oppose construction of local data centers (Gallup, earlier this year).
• A Pew Research survey of more than 8,500 U.S. adults finds Americans are more likely to view data centers negatively on energy bills, environmental strain, and living conditions than positively.

Dan Cassino, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and director of the FDU Poll, frames the issue as an extension of the affordability politics that have dominated U.S. elections since the pandemic. “Since the pandemic, affordability has become a key issue in U.S. politics, and energy prices are the current face of affordability,” Cassino told Newsweek. “In our polling, voters support anything to bring down their energy bills, but banning data centers is pretty much the most popular option.”

Cassino notes that data centers are “only a small part” of actual energy price increases, but the narrative is more powerful than the economics: “AI data centers are eating your electricity” is a simple and compelling story for a voter already skeptical of AI and looking for something tangible to oppose.

The Political Geography

The issue does not divide cleanly along partisan lines, which is what makes it structurally dangerous for incumbents.

Adams is a Republican who lost a Republican primary. The challenger ran on a local-control and energy-cost argument that appeals across party lines. In Oregon, where a data center controversy emerged in Cascade Locks, similar cross-partisan coalitions have organized against developments. In Virginia, where data center buildout is the most concentrated in the country, the issue has shown up in school board and county supervisor races.

The pattern: politicians who champion data center development on economic development grounds — jobs, tax revenue, infrastructure investment — are running into voters who see the downside first. The jobs are often remote, automated, or go to specialists; the energy costs are local and visible; the water use for cooling is a friction point in Western states already managing scarcity.

What This Means for AI Infrastructure

Nine cloud giants will spend $830 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026, according to TrendForce. A substantial portion of that spend requires new data center construction at scale, often in regions where land, water, and grid capacity are available but local populations are thin and politically engaged.

Utah was not supposed to be a hard fight. Box Elder County has the land, relatively low energy costs, and a pro-business political culture. The Stratos project had state-level backing from senior officials. It lost to local organizing and an affordability narrative that connected AI infrastructure to electricity bills.

The harder fights are now in Virginia suburbs, Texas, and Midwest states where grid stress from data center demand is already visible. If the Utah result normalises — if backing a major data center project becomes a career-ending vote rather than an economic development win — the political calculus for state and county officials approving the infrastructure the AI industry needs will shift materially.

No federal framework exists to preempt local opposition, and no AI lab has a lobbying infrastructure comparable to what utilities deploy on rate cases. The gap between where the industry needs to build and what local politics will absorb is widening.