Texans Elect Democrat Governor Who Vowed To Freeze Data Center Construction

Texas voters on Tuesday elected Democrat Gina Hinojosa as governor after she promised an immediate halt to new data centers in the state.

Hinojosa defeated three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott by seven percentage points in a major upset, CBS News projected. She is the first Democrat elected governor since Ann Richards in 1990 — and her campaign wants new data centers put on hold until state lawmakers pass protections, along with an end to the state’s tax breaks for the facilities.

“We need an immediate moratorium on data centers to last until the legislature can meet to put in place real protections so Texans can have a seat at the table to decide if and how data centers come into their communities,” her campaign website says.

Hinojosa will lead a state that holds more than a quarter of the data center capacity planned in the U.S. through 2030, Yahoo Finance reported.

Bloom Energy projects that Texas could make up almost 30 percent of the nation’s electricity demand for artificial intelligence by 2028, Agence France-Presse reported.

“There is nowhere else for data centers to go,” Stuart Turley, president and CEO of Sandstone Group, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Turley said he had told landowners hoping to sell to data center developers to wait until after the midterms.

“If the Democrats get into power, they will shut them all down and raise energy prices, and China wins,” he said.

Abbott’s office, the Hinojosa campaign, the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.