Gina Hinojosa is talking about them.
Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat running for governor, on Thursday called on Gov. Greg Abbott to halt all data center construction in the state until lawmakers craft rules for the projects, which have voters up in arms.
The Austin state representative accused Abbott of trying to punt the potentially toxic political issue to after November’s high-stakes midterms, arguing he should call lawmakers back to Austin now for a special session to set regulations.
“Greg Abbott talks a big game about what he will do after the election. The thing is, he has the power to do it today,” Hinojosa said during a press conference. “This problem is in his lap and in his lap alone.”
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Hinojosa said data centers are the “embodiment” of the populist themes she is campaigning on.
“Is this a state that is by and for the people, or the billionaires’ playground and we just live here?” she said.
Abbott’s position on data centers has shifted rapidly amid his run for a record-breaking fourth term. He has gone from touting Texas as the “epicenter of AI development” in November to vowing to push back against “AI data centers” earlier this month.
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She was joined at her Thursday press conference by a handful of residents living in communities with data centers, including Tom Weeks of Granbury. Weeks said his community is “under siege” by the noisy developments that rumble throughout the night leaving him and his neighbors sleep deprived.
Weeks told Hearst Newspapers he is a lifelong Republican who has voted for Abbott every time he’s been on the ballot. Now Weeks said he is a “one-issue voter” and will not support Abbott again.
“I think Abbott right now is just pandering,” Weeks said. “If he wins, he’ll go right back to his former stance. I don’t think he’s going to change.”
Calls are growing among data center opponents for Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session for lawmakers to rein in the projects that have roiled rural communities.
On Monday morning, in advance of two interim hearings this week dealing with data centers, grassroots organizers from across the state convened at the Capitol to voice their opposition to the massive computing centers that have proliferated rapidly over the last year.
The protest comes as data centers have emerged as an unexpected flashpoint ahead of November’s midterms. Roughly 40 people held signs reading “Governor Abbott is all hat and no cattle” and chanted “special session now.”
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Troy Jones, a GOP precinct chair from Paris, said Abbott has not gone far enough.
“To go far enough would be to have a special session to get the House and the Senate to get on board and to get something done,” Jones said. “It just keeps getting kicked down the road. Nobody really wants to do anything. Counties’ hands are tied. They can’t do anything.”
Abbott is the only official with the power to bring lawmakers back for a special session.
Sid Miller, the outgoing Republican Agricultural Commissioner whom Abbott campaigned against in the primary, pointed to the governor’s office and urged the crowd to call on him to act.
“He can hear everything we’re saying, and I invite him to come down here and join us today,” Miller said. “The governor has authority to bring the legislature back tomorrow. He can have them in session tomorrow. So we’re calling on him to do just that.”
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Clayton Tucker, a Democrat running to replace Miller, also spoke. Tucker has built his campaign against data centers and is one of a growing number of Democrats calling for a moratorium as they try to capitalize on the growing rural resentment.
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On Monday, lawmakers began considering options to limit or repeal a decade-old sales tax exemption for data centers that is costing the state more than $1 billion annually.
The 2013 law, a sales tax exemption for qualifying data centers, means data center developers don’t pay taxes on things like electricity, cooling systems and servers for up to two decades.
“What we thought we were voting for back in 2013, it’s a much different animal these days,” said state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate finance committee. “It’s time and it’s appropriate and necessary for the Legislature to reexamine whether this exemption still delivers a return that justifies its rapidly mounting foregone tax revenue.”
Lawmakers initially forecast that the exemption would cost the state only $14.6 million in forgone revenue in 2014 and 2015. But even early projections “significantly” underestimated the cost of the sales tax exemption, said Brad Reynolds, the chief revenue estimator at the Comptroller’s office. “Of course, we never anticipated the kind of rapid development in numbers and scale that we see today.”
The exemption is estimated to cost the state $3.3 billion in the 2028-2029 biennium.
In 2026 alone, the number of data centers that qualify for the exemption has nearly doubled, Reynolds said. Of the 138 data centers that qualify for exemption, 59 have been certified this year.
It’s kind of amazing how well this one issue stacks up against Abbott. There’s the flip-flops and weasel words, which even Republicans aren’t buying. There’s the billions in taxpayer dollars going towards trillion-dollar companies to get them to build more data centers here. There’s the utter lack of influence local governments have over these beasts, because Republicans that used to champion local control decided in the past few years that beating up cities was more important. There’s the price of electricity and the concern about water. There’s Abbott’s ruthless willingness to call special sessions when he feels they suit his needs, and the easy understanding that no real action will be taken in the spring, because by then it won’t be an immediate electoral issue. There’s even the reanimated corpse of a hell-hath-no-fury Republican that Abbott took out in the primary appearing at rallies with the Democratic candidate to replace him because he feels so strongly on this issue. Abbott has one move, and that’s to duck and cover and hope it isn’t as salient as Gina Hinojosa wants it to be. He isn’t good for much, but that there is right in his sweet spot.