Maine’s data center revolt will decide who controls the Senate — SkimNews
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- Maine voters registered widespread opposition to local data centers in a September UMass Lowell/YouGov poll: 76% opposed building one in their community and 58% strongly opposed.
- Maine Legislature passed what would have been the nation’s first statewide data-center moratorium in April, but Gov. Janet Mills vetoed it 10 days later; towns have since adopted temporary bans or scheduled November votes.
- Maine’s Senate race is projected to cost Democrats $81 million and Republicans $114 million, making it the most expensive Senate race per capita in U.S. history.
- Susan Collins secured $6.2 million in federal funding for a central Maine high-performance computing hub, received $325,644 from AI and crypto donors, and drew donations from nearly 100 billionaires.
- Elon Musk gave $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and spent about $450 million of his own money supporting Republicans in the midterms; his America PAC spent $2.1 million in Maine.
- Troy Jackson has no reported financial ties to data centers, AI or Big Tech and favors union jobs and guardrails; economic research cited in the story says most data centers create virtually no net employment after construction.
- Thomas Daffron, Collins’s husband, earned 2025 consulting fees from Scott Reed’s lobbying firm, which lobbied for a developer that built Maine data centers; the couple hold an estimated $300,000–$800,000 in AI- and data-center-linked investments.
Why it matters: The money trail around Collins—$6.2 million for a Maine computing hub, $325,644 from AI and crypto donors, and up to $800,000 in family AI and data-center investments—has sharpened a contest in which Jackson’s policy is similar. With 76% of Mainers opposing local projects, the winner will help determine Senate control and national data-center policy.
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