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Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong\u2019s<\/span> narrow defeat in Wisconsin\u2019s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday night<\/a> wasn\u2019t just a stinging blow to the left \u2014 it marks a political loss for a nonpartisan anti-data center movement that has been picking up significant steam across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley beat the odds to eke out a victory by less than a percentage point<\/a> on election night, a surprise upset after Crowley, who would be Wisconsin\u2019s first Black governor if he wins in November, dropped out of the race and then re-entered with the support of outgoing Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The race became dominated in the final days by inane issues<\/a> like whether Hong believed that Thanksgiving should exist, based on old tweets criticizing the holiday, echoing and accelerating<\/a> the annual Fox News \u201cWar on Christmas\u201d panic<\/a>. The sudden fury over old tweets was a distraction from a concrete <\/strong>issue that Hong had made a key focus of her public talking points and likely drove her surge in popularity: data centers.<\/p>\n Hong\u2019s campaign repeatedly emphasized that she was the only candidate in the race to support a data center moratorium<\/a>, which would pause construction of any new data centers, giving the state time to create regulations and study their environmental and energy impact. The moratorium would not extend to data center projects<\/a> already underway in the state.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s time to press control+alt+delete to put a stop to this AI data center crisis, a full moratorium until we have the new regulations we need to protect our energy costs, our economy, our environment,\u201d Hong said in a campaign video.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n By all indications, it\u2019s a popular position: A Gallup poll in May<\/a> found that seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their area, and politicians from Maine<\/a> to Texas<\/a> have had to grapple with the public\u2019s calls to bar the resource-hungry projects from their backyards.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Hong\u2019s narrow defeat is a loss for the data center moratorium movement, particularly in Wisconsin, which already has dozens of centers<\/a> littering the state. Crowley, now the Democratic nominee, has called for more regulation of data centers<\/a>, but has explicitly denounced a data center moratorium, calling it a \u201cshort-term\u201d solution. \u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to make [data centers] a front and center issue,\u201d said Michael Ceraso, a democratic strategist and founder and director of Winning Margins. \u201cIt might pop up peripherally.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But Hong\u2019s loss is far from a death knell for the anti-data center movement. While most voters would be hard-pressed to tell you what a data center was a few years ago, it has slowly become a major political issue that has helped to fuel the rise of insurgent progressives across the country. In this year\u2019s midterm primaries, anti-data center candidates from Colorado<\/a> to Kansas<\/a> have been running and winning on the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n