Will data centers be Oregon’s big political issue this fall?

In May, state Sen. Janeen Sollman, D-Hillsboro, area lost her bid for reelection to the legislature, the first such incumbent loss since 2018. Multiple reasons contributed to Sollman’s loss to union-backed challenger Myrna Muñoz, but a pivotal and new factor was data centers.

Those massive buildings, consuming vast amounts of electricity and water and producing compute, serving as the physical location of much of the internet cloud and especially the locus of fast-growing artificial intelligence.

The Sollman result also turned on factors including labor union support. But the broad emotional push seemed to come in reaction to the growth of data centers in the Hillsboro area.

Sollman herself said, “They were saying I was going to turn 1,700 acres of rich farmland, and turn them into data centers. It’s a totally unfair characterization of my record.”

On Aug. 2, responding to protests, the Hillsboro City Council set a moratorium lasting four months on additional data centers. The meeting was called abruptly with less than usual notice because, Mayor Beach Pace said, “The idea behind it was to prevent a rush of applications from data centers.”

This has become an explosive issue in Washington County, where somewhere between a dozen and three dozen (depending on how you count) data centers are operating or planned. And Washington County is not only Oregon’s second largest county, it is the political hinge that more than anywhere else took Oregon from a purple to a blue state in the last three decades.

But that’s not nearly all. The fight over data centers in Oregon has popped up in many places, some unexpected.

The website Cleanview counts 93 operating data centers operating in Oregon (hitting above average among the states), and 32 planned. Taken together, those operating use 5,098 megawatts.

The largest groupings in Oregon are in Washington County and in the Boardman-Hermiston area near the Columbia River. Secondary groups can be seen at Prineville and The Dalles, but there are smaller batches as well. Some maps indicate a half-dozen or so small data centers are located in downtown Portland.

The push to build more of them has brought the subject to the fore, sometimes in unexpected places.

This spring, Amazon proposed building a data center in the orchard country (the “fruit loop”) south of Hood River. At first, local officials seemed poised to approve it, but after community protests the Hood River City Council instead slapped a moratorium on data center construction through at least the end of the year. 

Places far afield are being considered as data center sites. The south-of-Bend exurb La Pine (which has an industrial area) is being planned by the Bitcoin mining firm Boxminer, and since its proposal in March city officials have moved toward approving a land sale to facilitate it — at least until a city council meeting in May, packed by hundreds of residents opposed to the project. 

Then there’s the proposal in Salem, where Verrus, a startup from California, planned to build a $5 billion data center on 32 acres of land it planned to buy from the state. Negotiations with the city had been operating under a nondisclosure agreement for some time until a July 27 Salem City Council meeting when it went public, and dozens of area residents protested. 

Within days, Gov. Tina Kotek said she would quash the state element of the transaction, saying “This decision is about my responsibility to make sure state actions reflect Oregon’s values and serve the public interest. Oregonians have made it clear they expect thoughtful, responsible decisions about projects of this scale, and I agree.”

The Salem City Council voted unanimously Monday to move toward a data center moratorium in the state capital, though that move is too late to block the Verrus proposal that had submitted plans for review before the council action.

Parts of the eastern Oregon data center belt seem uneasy about them too. On July 31, Oregon Rural Action said it would pursue a moratorium on expansion of data centers in the Umatilla and Morrow County area. 

These are not just localized outbursts: A national tide has been building against the centers. A May 13 Gallup poll concluded that 71% of Americans somewhat or strongly oppose construction of a data center near where they live, and an Oregon-specific poll Portland-based DHM Research released this week found 71% of Oregonians feel negatively about data centers.

Opposition was strong throughout the state, though pollsters found stronger feelings against data centers among women, young people and Democrats than men, older Oregonians and Republicans. 

Political analyst Josh Marshall speculated, “We basically know why they don’t want them. They’ll bogart all the electricity and water. Drive up rates. Wreck the environment. There’s another dimension of it though. The throughline of this age is that you’ve got these big tech platforms that can do anything they want. It is a society-driving spectacle that is there in plain sight and yet still under-appreciated. AI itself captures all of this.”

This isn’t an issue either major party has really made its own yet. Oregon Democrats have come closer, between Kotek’s Salem action and a proposal by four Democratic legislators (aimed at the 2027 legislature) to set a moratorium on new data center development, something 15 other states already have proposed. 

But much more is possible. This is a fall campaign issue ready for enterprising candidates to pick it up and run with it.