Ohio’s Democratic candidate for governor has a message for data centers that want to come into Ohio: you must meet certain conditions before being allowed to build here.
Data centers have been lauded as clean industry with good paying jobs. But as they proliferated in Ohio, they came under scrutiny, with swaths of farmland being bought up to build them and as critics blamed their massive energy needs for straining utilities, resulting in higher rates for Ohioans.
Acton said Monday she supports a conditional moratorium on new data centers.
“Costs are too high, and Ohio families and businesses need protection from data centers driving up costs. Ohio is open for business, but we are not up for sale. If you do not meet these conditions, we do not want you in Ohio," Acton said in a statement.
Acton’s running mate David Pepper detailed those conditions in an interview, saying they include using 100% union labor to build them. Unions have expressed support for data center construction. Pepper said other conditions include meeting environmental standards, signing community benefit agreements, and covering all of their utility costs.
“No one should be paying more because a data center came to town,” Pepper said.
He said ideally, those centers would bring their own energy source so costs can actually decrease. He also said the centers must be transparent, with no non-disclosure agreements.
Where Acton’s opponent stands on data centers
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has been supportive of data centers, and has also said data centers should take care of their energy needs, including using nuclear energy. His spokesman Evan Machan criticized Acton for her comments.
“Vivek has spent more than a year taking tough questions from Ohioans on this issue, while Amy Acton has spent months in hiding,” Machan said in a written statement. “She finally spoke up, only to parrot ideas Vivek has shared for months and pretend it’s new. Let’s see if the media falls for it.”
Ramaswamy has been endorsed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which as advocated for data centers in Ohio. He’s also received sizable financial contributions to his campaign coffers from data-center-linked companies.
A new analysis from the left-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio shows Ramaswamy will benefit from data centers since his financial disclosure reveals a personal investment portfolio that includes parts of the data center supply chain: chip manufacturers, hardware suppliers, real estate developers, and tech companies that operate data centers.
“We’ve got AI data centers moving to our state. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing,” Ramaswamy said in a video his account posted on X in March 2025. “I want the sectors of the future to come here, but that will make a level of demand on our electric grid of a kind that we have not seen in the history of our state.”
Ohio's next governor will have sway in data center development by appointing members to the board of directors of JobsOhio, the private, non-profit company that provides incentives to companies siting operations in Ohio. The new governor also appoints one member of the Ohio Power Siting Board, which approves energy infrastructure projects, and will appoint five members of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO), which regulates utilities.
