Who Paid for the Data Centers
By Anti-Corruption Action · October 22, 2026
A case study from the QPQ data center study. The live, state-by-state figures, with every politician and every vote, are on the data center page; the full report with its verification log is here.
Verification. Every dollar figure in this article is taken from the study, where it is checked against the filing system it came from: sixteen state campaign finance systems and the Virginia Public Access Project for state money, the FEC for federal PACs and super PACs, the Senate lobbying database for client spend, and the legislatures’ own roll-call records for votes. The study’s figures were re-derived from the database on October 22, 2026.
What the figures are. “Corporate” money is a company’s own treasury, legal in the states that allow it. “PAC” money is the company’s employee committee. Executives’ personal cheques, super PAC spending, 527 transfers and lobbying are counted separately and never added to those. Transfers between a politician’s own committees are left out everywhere.
The data center boom arrived in state capitals as a question about electricity: who builds the plants, who pays for the wires, and who is left holding the bill if the load never comes. The answers were written into law and into utility commission orders between 2023 and 2026, in sixteen states and, twice, on the floor of Congress. The money that moved alongside those decisions is a public record. This is what it shows.
The payer of record is usually the utility
The companies whose names are on the data centers give comparatively little to the politicians who decide their fate, and most of what they give is routed: through trade groups, inaugural committees, caucus committees and landowners. The utility that will sell the power is the payer of record, and its money is large and direct.
In Virginia, Dominion Energy gave $33,755,558 to candidates and committees between 2023 and 2026 once its transfers between its own committees are set aside. Amazon, the largest data center operator in the state, gave $1,314,079 from its corporate treasury in the same years; the Data Center Coalition’s PAC gave $405,000. In Georgia, Georgia Power’s treasury put $1,125,000 into Georgians First Leadership Committee, Gov. Brian Kemp’s leadership committee, and its employee PAC another $509,400 across 547 gifts to state candidates. In Texas, where companies may not give to candidates, Oncor’s state PAC gave Gov. Greg Abbott $300,000 and Oncor’s chief executive, E. Allen Nye Jr., gave him $655,000 personally. In California, where companies may give, PG&E gave $30,405,660 from its treasury in four years, more than Google ($14,393,499), Meta ($13,529,000), Edison International ($12,351,720) and Sempra ($10,101,786).
| State | Payer | Money type | Amount | Largest recipient |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virginia | Dominion Energy | Corporate, net of own-committee transfers | $33,755,558 | Speaker Don Scott: $2,885,409 across his campaign and his Virginia Future Generations PAC |
| California | PG&E | Corporate | $30,405,660 | $13,575,000 to Californians for Resilient and Affordable Energy, the No on Steyer committee |
| California | Corporate | $14,393,499 | $10,000,000 to California Leads | |
| California | Meta | Corporate | $13,529,000 | $6,050,000 to California Leads |
| Louisiana | Entergy (ENPAC) | PAC, since 2015 | $1,440,441 | Public Service Commission and legislative candidates |
| Georgia | Georgia Power | Corporate | $1,125,000 | Georgians First Leadership Committee (Gov. Kemp), $25,000 in 2023 and 2024, $525,000 in 2025, $550,000 in 2026 |
| Indiana | Duke Energy Indiana | Corporate | $501,800 | House Republican Campaign Committee $100,000; Gov. Braun $30,000 |
| Texas | Oncor Texas State PAC | PAC | $300,000 | Gov. Abbott |
| Ohio | AEP federal PAC | PAC | $257,274 | 55 Ohio committees; Senate President Rob McColley $29,500 |
Who decided
The decisions were made by whoever held the gavel: a governor with a veto, a legislative leader who controls the calendar, a committee chair, a five-member utility commission. The money reached those people in particular.
Georgia. HB 1192 would have suspended the state’s data center sales-tax exemption for two years. It passed the House 96-71 and the Senate 29-22 in 2024. Gov. Kemp vetoed it on May 7, 2024; the exemption runs to 2031. Georgia Power’s treasury had given his leadership committee $25,000 in each of 2023 and 2024; it gave $525,000 in 2025 and $550,000 in 2026. Troutman Pepper Locke, the utility’s law firm, gave $15,000 through its PAC to each of three Public Service Commissioners, Echols, Fitz Johnson and Pridemore, who voted on the certification of new gas generation for data center demand.
Texas. Sen. Phil King authored SB 1015 (2023) and SB 6 (2025), the large-load interconnection law. Oncor’s chief executive wrote him a $20,000 cheque nine days after SB 1015 was signed and another ten days after SB 6 was signed, each in the first week after the post-session fundraising moratorium lifted. The exemption SB 6 left in place is worth $1.3 billion a year by the Comptroller’s estimate.
Louisiana. HB 827 passed 83-4 and 35-0 and was signed as Act 730 on June 19, 2024: a twenty-year sales-and-use-tax rebate, worth about $3.3 billion to Meta by one published estimate, for the company’s Richland Parish campus. Meta gave Gov. Jeff Landry $24,000 on October 27, 2025, and $76,000 to the Republican Party of Louisiana four days later; Entergy’s PAC gave the governor $24,000. The Public Service Commission then approved Entergy’s gas plants for the site; Entergy’s PAC had given the commissioners Greene $70,500, Skrmetta $57,554 and Francis $47,500 over the years in the file.
Virginia. Dominion’s largest recipients were the people who controlled the outcome of every data center bill: Speaker Don Scott ($2,885,409), Attorney General Jason Miyares ($1,445,965, the utility’s largest gift to one race), Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell ($940,000, in six $100,000 cheques), and Senate Finance chair Louise Lucas ($863,727). In 2025 the one bill with teeth that reached the governor, HB 1601 on site assessments, was vetoed, and SB 960 on cost allocation died in conference. In 2026 SB 253 and HB 1393 were signed on May 14 after the governor’s amendments removed their explicit cost-shift mechanism; the sales-tax exemption stands through 2035. Lucas is the counter-example: the top recipient in the Senate sponsored the bill to end the exemption.
California. SB 57 (2025) passed only after Assembly Appropriations removed its data center tariff, at which point PG&E dropped its opposition; it was signed on October 11, 2025, the same day AB 93, a water-use reporting bill, was vetoed. The payer set had given Speaker Robert Rivas $182,200, Assembly Utilities and Energy chair Cottie Petrie-Norris $173,200 and Gov. Newsom $155,000. A year later the direction changed: on September 21, 2026 the governor signed seven data center bills on cost-shift tariffs, water and energy disclosure, with no CEQA exemptions.
| Who | From the payer set | Decision | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gov. Brian Kemp (GA) | Georgia Power corporate $1,125,000 to his leadership committee, 2023–2026 | Vetoed HB 1192, May 7, 2024 | Sales-tax exemption preserved through 2031 |
| Sen. Phil King (TX) | Oncor PAC $30,000; Oncor CEO Allen Nye $40,000 in two post-signing cheques | Authored SB 1015 (2023) and SB 6 (2025) | Large-load regime; exemption kept, $1.3B/yr |
| Gov. Jeff Landry (LA) | Meta $24,000; ENPAC $24,000; $76,000 from the payer set in all | Signed Act 730, June 19, 2024 | 20-year rebate, about $3.3B to Meta |
| Speaker Don Scott (VA) | Dominion $2,885,409 to his campaign and PAC | Controlled the House calendar for every data center bill, 2024–2026 | Exemption intact through 2035; cost-shift mechanism removed from SB 253 |
| Speaker Robert Rivas (CA) | $182,200 from the payer set | Presided over SB 57's passage without its tariff (2025) and the seven 2026 laws | A stripped bill and a veto in 2025; seven cost and disclosure laws in 2026 |
| Sen. Louise Lucas (VA) | Dominion $863,727 | Sponsored SB 253 to end the exemption | The counter-example: top recipient, reform sponsor |
Washington: two votes against, one order for
The federal money is of a different kind. Almost none of it is corporate PAC giving to members; it is super PAC money routed through affiliates, and lobbying. Lobbying filings that mention data centers total $336.5 million of client spend across 458 filings since 2023, an upper bound since a filing’s amount covers every issue on it; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce alone accounts for $87.7 million of it in 2025 and 2026.
The industry’s top federal ask of 2025, a moratorium on state AI laws, was struck from H.R. 1 by Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s amendment, 99-1, on July 1, 2025. The House then passed the Ratepayer Protection Act, H.R. 9340, 417-3 on September 16, 2026; it codifies the industry-signed White House pledge as a standard states must “consider.” The Senate let it die when cloture failed 57-43 on September 30. The binding federal action came by executive order instead: EO 14365, signed December 11, 2025. The committee chair who moved H.R. 9340, Rep. Brett Guthrie, had taken $10,000 each from Google and Amazon and $10,000 each from the Dominion, AEP, Duke, Entergy, Vistra and Constellation PACs in the 2025–26 cycle. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who voted against cloture and sponsored a data center tax-disclosure bill, had taken $51,000 from the same payer set.
One policy, formulated nationally and executed locally
The state fights are not sixteen separate stories. The ask list is the same everywhere, often in the same phrases: keep the sales-tax exemption; certify gas generation on data center demand; keep cost allocation inside the utility commission and out of statute; preserve by-right or fast-track siting; no moratorium. The carriers are the same: the Data Center Coalition lobbied in at least eight states, urged Georgia’s veto and rewrote Indiana’s local-payment clause in private meetings; ALEC’s model accord (August 12, 2026) opposes bans and endorses “cost responsibility”; the White House enrolled 23 Republican governors and 187 utilities in the industry’s own voluntary pledge. The venues were the ones with the least public attention: a House subcommittee in Richmond, a five-member commission in Atlanta, a four-to-one commission in Plaquemine, a lame-duck county board in Prince William.
What reversed it was voters, acting around their representatives. Georgia’s PSC incumbents were removed at the ballot on November 4, 2025. Prince William’s board chair lost a primary over the Digital Gateway and the rezoning was voided in court. Port Washington, Wisconsin, held the first referendum in the country on a data center and voted about two to one against it on April 7, 2026. North Carolina’s three Democrats who supplied the override votes on SB 266 lost their primaries on March 3, 2026. Tucson rejected Project Blue 7-0 under public pressure. Where a legislature then tightened the rules, as Arizona did after Tucson and Pennsylvania’s governor did by executive order in August 2026, voters had moved first.
What this is, and what it is not
Every item here is a public record: a contribution on a state filing, a roll-call vote, a veto message, a commission order. The record shows who paid, who decided and what was decided; it does not show why. The study states its limits in its methodology section and records every check it ran in its verification log. The database behind it is open: each politician named here has a page listing every contribution, and the data center page walks through the payers, the recipients, the votes and the orders state by state, with the figures recomputed from the loaded rows each night.