U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin told Midwest swing voters that anger over utility bills and Data Center proposals has become one of the clearest signals she is hearing on the ground, and she said both parties are mishandling it. In Speedway, voters were already talking about electric bills before she walked into the room.
Slotkin, who traveled to Indianapolis on June 5 as the guest speaker for the Indiana State Democratic Convention, said she has been holding town halls and focus groups across the Midwest to hear what voters want heading toward 2028. At the convention, Beau Bayh won the nomination for secretary of state, but Slotkin’s message was aimed less at party procedure than at the unease she says is building around jobs, energy costs and AI. She said she introduced an “economic war plan” last year centered on jobs, schools, housing, energy and healthcare, and described growing the middle class as the “preeminent issue” in her hierarchy, with housing, energy and healthcare all subordinate to that goal. The future of work, she said, including AI and Data Center expansion, comes after those priorities.
The conversation in Speedway made the anxiety feel immediate. A woman in the focus group said a friend’s daughter had been discouraged from pursuing paralegal work because artificial intelligence might wipe out those jobs. A man brought up Shelbyville Mayor Scott Furgeson’s caught-on-video remark that he had only seen anti-Data Center signs in front of “shitty houses,” a line that has fueled outrage among opponents who think local officials are dismissing them. Slotkin said Americans are increasingly taking their frustration over utility bills out on Data Center proposals and worrying that an AI-dominated economy will leave them behind.
She argued that the response has been poor on both sides. Slotkin said some Democratic colleagues want a moratorium and simply want to say no, while some Republican colleagues want each state to handle the issue with no federal involvement. She also said the people promoting AI Data Centers are doing a terrible job of explaining themselves, going so far as to say, “Fire everyone who's doing the community outreach for AI data centers, because they're doing a horrible job.”
Her warning lands at a moment when the politics of AI are no longer abstract. Slotkin cited a Gallup figure that 70% of Americans oppose building Data Centers in their areas, a number that captures how quickly the issue has moved from a niche land-use fight to a broader argument over power bills, jobs and economic security. The overlap between public backlash and business optimism is already shaping debates far beyond Indiana, from Utah to South Carolina and even Wall Street, where investors have been chasing the infrastructure buildout behind the boom.
What makes Slotkin’s stop in Indianapolis matter is not just the crowd she met, but the direction she says the country is headed. She is treating Data Center opposition as a mainstream political warning sign, not a local grievance, and she is pressing both parties to stop talking past voters who are worried about paying more for electricity while fearing that the next wave of technology could hollow out their work. The unresolved question is whether anyone in either party is prepared to offer a policy answer before that anger hardens into something bigger.
