One GOP senator says end the data center tax breaks. The other won't say if he agrees.

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno put data center operators on notice this month: stop taking taxpayer subsidies, stop giving them, or he will push a federal tax that wipes the breaks out. His Ohio Republican colleague Jon Husted, locked in a tight Senate race against former Sen. Sherrod Brown, will not say whether he agrees.

Less than a month before Husted's reelection fight, the National Republican Senatorial Committee's own Aug. 18 internal memo warned that "more than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted's neck." The same memo added that "if he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice — and they will not go near the next one" (Hoodline reports on the memo).

Husted was appointed to the seat in early 2025 when JD Vance left to become vice president. He now faces former Sen. Sherrod Brown in a race both parties view as a toss-up. The NRSC's language is unusually blunt for a campaign committee memo, and it tells every GOP incumbent in a data-center state what the political cost of speaking up looks like.

The data-center backlash in Ohio predates Husted's race. Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, paused new data center tax incentives in May 2026 only after Signal Ohio reported that 2025 costs in the state were $1.4 billion more than taxpayers had been told. Former Gov. John Kasich, also a Republican, had quietly given 40-year tax breaks to Google, Meta, and Amazon for data center construction even though built-out data centers employ relatively few people per dollar of capital spent. The bipartisan enabling is part of why a "GOP flip-flop" framing is too clean. Both parties signed the check.

What changed the politics is the price of the grid. Data centers that draw from the public transmission system have begun to push retail electricity prices up for households in their host counties. Centers that generate on-site, or "behind the meter," avoid the costs that get spread across every utility customer but produce noise, diesel exhaust, and water demand that local residents do notice. The bill that residents see in their monthly statement is now the public evidence that the tax break is doing more for the data center operator than for the host community. A Republican-dominated energy-affordability summit in Columbus this summer advocated streamlining permits for energy projects to ease data-center load, a tacit admission that the giveaway architecture no longer pencils.

Moreno's office has begun circulating draft legislation that would, in effect, claw back 100% of state and local data-center tax incentives at the federal level. The move is policy rhetoric, not law. No bill has passed, and the risk that other Republican senators will publicly follow Moreno is, by the NRSC's own reading, low.

The Husted campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether the senator backs the federal clawback. That non-answer is itself a tell. The forward question is whether other GOP senators in data-center states follow Moreno or stay silent like Husted. A loss in Ohio framed as a data-center referendum would chill new projects nationwide, the memo warned. It would also confirm for every incumbent in Virginia, Texas, and Arizona that the safest play is to keep their mouths shut, even as the grid price tag for the next project lands in their state too.

Moreno has chosen a different play. Whether the rest of his caucus joins him will decide whether the GOP's data-center consensus survives the next election.