Will Lawrence is one of the founders of the Sunrise Movement, a grassroots group of climate activists. He is currently running for Congress in a swing district in Michigan and is one of a growing number of candidates across the country calling for a moratorium on data center development.
Senator Bernie Sanders does he supported himcalling Lawrence a candidate who “will demand real accountability from big tech and artificial intelligence companies.” Lawrence says the aversion to data centers helps him understand rural resistance to another type of large-scale industrial projects in the state: utility-scale renewable energy.
For Lawrence’s campaign, data centers are an significant issue that could draw voters to his side in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 7th District in August. Data for Progress’s internal polling of likely Democratic voters in the district shared with WIRED shows that more than 40 percent of respondents were “significantly more likely” to vote for an anti-data center candidate. This message resonated even more among respondents under the age of 45: Nearly 80 percent of younger voters said they were significantly more likely or willing to support a candidate who opposes data centers. (The 7th district includes the university town of Ingham.)
Data centers “for sure [weren’t] “It’s an issue I expected to talk about in the campaign,” Lawrence tells WIRED. He says voters began to organically approach him at town halls and other meetings after he announced his candidacy last summer, asking for his advice as a longtime organizer on how to channel anti-data center energy among neighbors into something productive.
“People feel a complete lack of respect from the businesses and local officials who welcome them to the city,” he says.
A Data for Progress poll placed Lawrence ahead of both opponents in the primary. Another survey authorized by one of his opponents and published in April shows Lawrence winning the primary, although it also shows that the expansive majority of voters remain undecided. Lawrence also remains third in fundraising.
There are at least 11 data centers scheduled throughout Michiganaccording to the immaculate energy database Cleanview. Significant local opposition in two municipalities in the 7th District has halted at least two planned projects over the past year. But data center developers have found a way to overcome local opposition in other parts of the state. After a municipality in the 6th Ward voted against an Oracle data center earlier this year, the company filed a lawsuit and the city allowed the investment to proceed rather than engage in a costly court battle.
Earlier this month, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appeared at the opening of an Oracle data center, where she was photographed smiling next to OpenAI’s Sam Altman and praising the $16 billion investment.
“Any candidate worth his salt knows that these data centers are toxic,” says Cooper Teboe, a Democratic strategist in California. Candidates who don’t recognize this, Teboe argues, “are not the candidates who will win.”
Christy McGillivray, executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a Michigan-based democracy reform organization, said Whitmer’s appearance at the inauguration was a sedate mistake on the part of the governor, who is fielding a 2028 presidential candidate.
“It literally blew my mind,” he says. “I thought, ‘Are you trying to hurt the entire Democratic Party?’”
Lawrence says that during the election campaign he encountered data center protesters who were very different from him politically. They included people opposed to the construction of data centers who were also opposed to solar and wind projects built on farmland.
Michigan is a hotbed of resistance to renewable energy projects. The year 2025 review ranks it as the state with the most local restrictions: More than 60 local governments in Michigan have adopted ordinances, moratoriums or other restrictions on wind and solar development between 2011 and 2024. The report shows that local opposition has stopped or blocked at least 28 projects across the state.