Burgin council members paid a price for their data center support. They weren’t the only ones.

Joe Monroe knew he had a good shot at winning as a write-in candidate, yet he also realized it was going to be an “uphill battle.” 

But when he went to the Mercer County courthouse Tuesday night to check the results for the Burgin mayoral race, he had won handily, with 75% of the vote over his opponent, George Hensley, a sitting city council member. He won 273 write-in votes over Hensley’s 91 votes. 

“I didn’t realize it would be by that kind of margin,” Monroe told the Lantern. “I’m thinking it probably had to do something with the data center.”

The small Mercer County city of Burgin, with a little more than 1,000 people, has been embroiled in prior months leading up to the election over a proposal to annex property into the city for a hyperscale data center. Officials with the local school district touted the potential boon of tax revenue the data center could bring, while residents with the community group We Are Mercer County packed city council meetings with a range of concerns, including environmental impacts. 

While Monroe, appointed interim mayor earlier this year, won his election, other incumbents on the Burgin city council did not. The Burgin city council and mayoral races were among a number of elections for local and state elected office across Kentucky where the politics of data centers — and their relative unpopularity with the public — could have played an outsized role in ousting incumbents and pushing new people into office. 

Monroe said there are four new members elected to the Burgin city council. One of them is Bethany Corea, a former volunteer firefighter and a volunteer with the community group We Are Mercer County that’s raised strong concerns about the potential impacts of a hyperscale data center. The top vote-getter for the city council was Melinda Wofford, who walked out of a city council meeting to prevent a vote that would have advanced consideration of the data center.

“Some of the other council members that got beat didn’t follow what the voters were saying. They just didn’t listen to them,” Monroe said. “The ones that got in that were elected, the four new ones, they listened to the people, and they let the people be heard.”

Hensley, the city council member who lost to Monroe, told the Lantern he believed Monroe’s comments were “bullcrap” and suggested that people outside of Burgin had conducted a door-knocking campaign to oppose him. Hensley had supported annexation efforts connected to the data center and opposed a recent move by the city to implement planning and zoning regulations, a move also connected to the local data center debate. 

“I wish now that we could have had the data center. I really do,” Hensley said. “I don’t see Burgin surviving too many more years without some kind of income.” 

Data center influence

Elsewhere in Kentucky, other incumbents lost in races where data centers became a prominent talking point. 

In Mason County, where the technology company Meta is planning to build a hyperscale data center campus, Democratic Mason County Judge-Executive Owen McNeill lost reelection to Republican Eric Bach. McNeill was a big backer of the economic development potential of the data center campus, citing millions of dollars in tax revenue and jobs the county would receive. McNeill and other members of the fiscal court had signed non-disclosure agreements, which generally require the signee to not reveal specific information on a project.

McNeill had won a four-year term to his seat by about a nine-point margin in 2022 but lost the seat by about 26 points on Tuesday, according to unofficial results. McNeill and Bach did not respond to text messages and voicemail messages Wednesday requesting an interview. 

In Simpson County, Republican county judge-executive Matt Barnes said local candidates running for office in the county seat of Franklin — who voted to advance a local data center proposal that is now entangled in litigation — lost their elections.

“It’s not just Democrats or Republicans here in this community that are up in arms about it. It’s everyone,” Barnes said about the data center proposal. “I think there’s just this huge anti-data center sentiment, and I don’t think it’s just in Kentucky. I think it’s nationwide. But I do think it’s more real in the communities like ours.”

In state legislative races, candidates who attacked their opponents in attempts to tie them to the unpopularity of data centers also won races. 

Democrat Jennifer Hardin defeated House Majority Whip Jason Nemes in a very tight election after Hardin attacked Nemes over being a primary sponsor of a bill, House Bill 775 in 2025, that expanded to all counties a sales and use tax break for data center equipment. Nemes had responded in a Facebook post that “there are lies and misleading ads of statements taken wildly out of context” being “peddled” about him, arguing he wanted ratepayer protections against data center impacts.

In Northern Kentucky, Democrat Aaron Currin defeated Republican Rep. Stephanie Dietz, R-Edgewood, in a race where local Democrats put up a billboard that stated “REPUBLICANS SOLD US OUT ON DATA CENTERS.” Dietz had voted for HB 775 in 2025. 

And in Mercer County, Republican Rep. Kim King, R-Harrodsburg, fended off a challenge and a rematch by Democrat Katrina Sexton that saw Sexton essentially split the voters in Mercer County, according to unofficial results. 

Tres Watson, a former spokesperson for the Republican Party of Kentucky, told the Kentucky Lantern he believed the debate over data centers had a larger role in local races, including the Mason County judge-executive race, but that it was harder to pinpoint how influential they were in state legislative races. 

Watson said King’s past statements of wanting to respect local decision-making on weighing a data center got unfairly interpreted by anti-data center activists to mean she was for the data center. Members of We Are Mercer County have accused King of dismissing data center concerns, and a campaign ad for King had stated that she was “holding big tech and data centers” accountable. 

“As a member of the General Assembly, I think a lot of those members typically tend to basically say, ‘Well, I don’t want local government telling me how to do my job. I’m not going to tell local government how to do their job.’” Watson said. “Regardless of what the actual facts were or what her intentions were, it got taken to be a pro-data center position.” 

However, Elizabeth Fels-McDowell, a Lexington resident who started the Facebook group “No Kentucky Data Centers,” believes Kentucky voters awarded candidates who took stands for data center protections and against active proposals. 

She pointed to victories by Currin, Hardin and Rep. Adam Moore, D-Lexington’s victories, as evidence of that. Moore is drafting a bill to implement protections against data center impacts for next year’s legislative session. 

“I think that a lot of people in Kentucky are realizing that you can be a regular person with a family, with a job in Kentucky, and run for office to defend your community, to defend Kentucky families and farmers from out-of-control, unregulated development,” Fels-McDowell said. “I think people are realizing that the bar to clear to run for office is often really low.”

This story has been updated.