HOUSTON — Rural voters may not stop the spread of data centers, but they could stop Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
The Republican is bleeding support from small towns as he seeks a fourth term because of two late-emerging issues: power-hungry tech campuses and a planned $33 billion electric transmission build-out.
Pushback against Abbott points to larger fears about losing rural identities, but also to everyday concerns about construction, pollution and tight supplies of water and electricity. Shawn Nanny, a Republican county commissioner in West Texas, said data centers and power line plans are the “straws that broke the camel’s back” when it comes to Abbott and other Texas GOP leaders.
Some longtime conservatives are now considering the unthinkable — voting in November for a Democrat to be Texas’ next governor. And Abbott’s August directive to pause Texas data center grid approvals hasn’t convinced all of them to vote for him.
“They understand the repercussions of that, but you know what I’m hearing is, ‘Yeah, we’ll have a Democrat in there and grit our teeth and bear it, but hopefully we’ll come out of it the following election,’” said Nanny, who lives in Tom Green County. “They’re so upset; they just want [Abbott] out.”
The welcoming approach that Abbott’s Texas has taken toward data centers until now makes the rural pushback — and the governor’s retreat — particularly striking as the industry grapples with resistance nationwide.
“Rural people feel like they are the ones seeing the brunt of this, and they don’t like it,” said Jim Henson, executive director of the Texas Politics Project. “These issues are starting to bond together a lot of the people against data centers.”
Texas has not elected a Democrat as governor in more than 35 years, but analysts say Abbott can’t afford to lose much of his rural support in November. Recent polls released by Texas A&M University and Fox News showed Abbott with a 1 percentage point lead over Democratic challenger state Rep. Gina Hinojosa.
Polling from the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project showed Abbott’s approval rating among rural voters plunged from 2018 to 2026 — going from 63 percent to 48 percent.
In a statement, Abbott campaign press secretary Eduardo Leal said the governor is committed to fighting to protect the livelihoods, property, resources and quality of life of Texans who live in rural areas.
“Rural Texas is the lifeblood of our great state, and Governor Abbott has always believed that economic growth cannot come at the expense of rural communities,” Leal said.
Rural Americans are among the most opposed to data center development, The POLITICO Poll shows. Fifty-one percent of rural U.S. adults surveyed in mid-July said they are opposed to data centers, compared with 32 percent of urban residents.
Those numbers reflect higher rates of rural opposition to infrastructure projects in general, including power plants, warehouses and airports, according to the poll. But the disdain for data centers is higher than those other types of buildings.
Numerous conservative voters in sparsely populated areas said in interviews they feel like Abbott and state Republican lawmakers from larger cities have been over eager to support business and infrastructure build-outs that threaten their way of life.
And activists across the political spectrum bemoan state lawmakers’ actions to strip counties and municipalities of authority — so much so that in most unincorporated areas, Texas counties can only regulate data centers’ drainage plans, floodway construction, septic tanks and driveway permits.
Rural residents say there’s a growing tension between Abbott’s push to support the “Texas economic miracle” by enticing big business to less populated areas and the state’s long-standing ranching and agricultural traditions.
“It feels like an attack on a culture, a way of life, because now I think rural Texas is feeling like ‘Okay, now they want us, but don’t want our culture — they want our resources,’” said Suzanne Bellsnyder, an Abbott campaign field director in 2014 who now runs the Texas Rural Reporter website.
Democrats, including Hinojosa, have been leaning into rural voters’ antipathy, as have some Republicans. They say rural Texans’ concerns are being ignored for the sake of business interests.
Hinojosa on Tuesday unveiled a new campaign ad targeting “Abbott Intelligence” in rural markets.
“I’ve spent this campaign crossing Texas, and everywhere I go, rural voters tell me Greg Abbott stopped listening to them years ago,” Hinojosa said last week in a statement. “As governor, I’ll fight to put the people of Texas first, not the billionaire class.”
‘Single-issue voters’
Nowhere is the tension more evident than in fights over proposed data centers and thousands of miles of extra-high-voltage 765-kilovolt transmission lines.
Hundreds of people have come to the state capital in recent weeks to express their fury over both data centers and the $33 billion plan for 765-kV lines that would cut horizontally across the state along three paths, from Central Texas to the Permian Basin in West Texas.
One state Senate committee hearing in late June over transmission lines lasted more than 15 hours, and multiple public speakers said they were Republicans who planned to vote Abbott out of office in November.
Dozens of rural state lawmakers and thousands of rural Texans have called on the state Public Utility Commission to delay approving the transmission lines until the state Legislature can overhaul the approval process — either in a special session this year or when it reconvenes as scheduled in January.
Abbott, who appointed all five of the PUC commissioners, has largely remained publicly silent on the power lines. He has said in statements that the state must invest in new transmission but encouraged the public to give PUC feedback on the proposed routes.
That public silence, and lack of action, has angered landowners in the lines’ paths.
“We are not a bunch of woke Marxist liberals here, but I’m telling you our constituents oppose this and may become single-issue voters over this,” Greg Torres, McCulloch County attorney and a Republican in Central Texas, said in an interview about the 765-kV lines.
The pushback has been just as fierce with data centers.
Constituents have flooded local town halls and state legislative hearings this year to voice their indignation over hundreds of built or planned data centers that are popping up across the state.
Abbott has courted data centers and artificial intelligence, calling Texas the “epicenter” of AI development in a press briefing last November as Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced plans to invest $40 billion in Texas to develop data centers.
But Abbott has changed his tack in recent months as anguish over data centers has grown.
Abbott proposed some broad guardrail legislation in June that would require data centers to use water-efficient cooling technologies, repeal their sales tax incentives and mandate they pay for their own power infrastructure costs.
And earlier this month, Abbott directed Texas electricity regulators to pause all new data center approvals until they could conduct an audit of hundreds of proposed projects that have lined up to plug into the state’s main power grid.
Leal, who works on Abbott’s campaign, said those actions show that the governor “has taken decisive action to ensure data centers pay their own way, bring their own power, reuse their own water, be good neighbors, and never force Texas families to subsidize their infrastructure.”
He also said that some of the largest tech companies in the world — including Google, Microsoft, Mega, Anthropic and OpenAI — have agreed to meet broad “standards” outlined in Abbott’s legislative proposals.
A memo from Cygnal, a Republican pollster, said Abbott’s pause “found the sweet spot to make data centers deliver for Texas.”
But some rural voters aren’t buying Abbott’s change in tone.
“Personally, I think it’s just covering his butt,” said Mary Jo Bloomquist, a Republican who lives in Hood County southwest of Fort Worth. “It makes him look like he’s doing something, but he’s really not.”
Nanny, in Tom Green County, said his neighbors were initially excited after Abbott’s data center pause. But the mood soon started to shift. Residents started saying Abbott’s pause was a political ploy so rural voters would drop their guard.
“They think it was all smoke and mirrors,” Nanny said.
Simmering tensions
He also said that some of the largest tech companies in the world — including Google, Microsoft, Mega, Anthropic and OpenAI — have agreed to meet broad “standards” outlined in Abbott’s legislative proposals.
A memo from Cygnal, a Republican pollster, said Abbott’s pause “found the sweet spot to make data centers deliver for Texas.”
But some rural voters aren’t buying Abbott’s change in tone.
“Personally, I think it’s just covering his butt,” said Mary Jo Bloomquist, a Republican who lives in Hood County southwest of Fort Worth. “It makes him look like he’s doing something, but he’s really not.”
Nanny, in Tom Green County, said his neighbors were initially excited after Abbott’s data center pause.
But the mood soon started to shift. Residents started saying Abbott’s pause was a political ploy so rural voters would drop their guard.
“They think it was all smoke and mirrors,” Nanny said.
Simmering tensions
An entrance to an artificial intelligence data center complex in Abilene, Texas.
An entrance to an artificial intelligence data center complex in Abilene, Texas, is seen. | Matt O'Brien/AP
The rural revolt has roots that predate the current data center surge.
When a bloc of rural Republican lawmakers refused to support Abbott’s push to create a statewide school voucher program in 2023, the governor targeted them in primary elections the following year.
Bellsnyder with the Texas Rural Reporter said many of the rural incumbents in that bloc lost their seats, and with them, expertise on issues like water rights and agriculture.
Republican lawmakers have also worked to wrestle power away from local municipalities and create policies that govern the entire state.
The state Legislature in 2017 passed a bill to prevent local governments from passing ordinances banning stores from giving customers plastic bags. In 2023, state lawmakers passed legislation barring cities and counties from creating local ordinances that overstep state laws.
Then they passed HB 2559, in 2025, which prevented municipalities from passing moratoriums on data centers and other kinds of developments.
County officials across the state say they often only find out about data center projects after developers have already bought land and have worked with local utilities to get their campuses up and running.
“Right now it’s just the Wild West. They can come in and do whatever they want to,” said Jason Grant, a Navarro County commissioner northeast of Waco. “It all just came in on us so soon. Four months ago, nobody knew what a data center was. Now, boom, it’s the biggest thing going.”
The Data Center Coalition has said it hopes the audit process and Abbott’s directive will separate responsible developers from bad actors. But it called on the state and grid operators to “move swiftly” in their studies.
Concerns over local control have reached a fever pitch in Hood County, where Bloomquist lives.