AI data center push roils Kansas politics. Immigration insights.

By Clay Wirestone | opinion editor

By Max McCoy

Cindy Holscher has something she would like you to know.

She changed her mind on data centers because she listens.

“The subject was coming up over and over again,” she said of the 80 or so town halls she held in the last 12 months across Kansas. “It seemed to me at the time that a lot of candidates were really wary of this subject and hadn’t figured out this was something people cared about.”

When Holscher, a state senator from Overland Park, won the primary to become the Democratic nominee for governor two months ago, it was partly fueled by her call for a state moratorium on new data center construction. Since then, public concern over data centers and alarm about artificial intelligence have accelerated, turning a wild card in the primary into what may be a defining issue for the governor’s race in Kansas and midterms across the country.

The data center divide is just one disagreement among many between Holscher and her opponent, Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican. But in a political climate where party lines have been scrambled because of populist resistance to big tech, it may prove a bigger factor than anyone would have guessed just a few months ago.

Masterson’s campaign acknowledged, but did not otherwise respond, to an emailed request from me for an in-person interview about data centers.

DODGE CITY — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived in southwest Kansas on Sept. 22 and departed three days later, leaving fear, uncertainty and anger.

Many in the Hispanic and Latino communities in Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal, where most ICE activity was located, returned to work this week. But their fear persists and they aren’t yet leaving their homes or returning to regular activities, multiple immigrants said.

In the early months of 2022, Democrats in Congress came close to passing an appropriations bill that did not include a provision barring federal funding for abortions — maybe the closest it had ever come in more than 40 years.

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