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HARRISBURG — A critical swing seat in Pennsylvania’s state Senate could come down to which candidate can convince voters they’re more firmly opposed to data centers.
In the final weeks of their campaigns, incumbent Republican Tracy Pennycuick and Democratic challenger Chris Thomas are spending millions of dollars blanketing the 24th state Senate District in ads that accuse the other of being in the pockets of data center developers, as several local proposals draw community opposition.
Spanning parts of Berks and Montgomery Counties, the district is among the upper chamber’s most competitive this cycle. Republicans won their last Senate race there by four points and also hold a roughly six-point registration edge. But Democrats believe the wind is at their backs. The 24th is part of the party’s strategy for flipping the state Senate for the first time in decades, which could help deliver Democrats a political trifecta that would allow them to set the agenda in Harrisburg.
The district has seen three data center proposals within its borders, each drawing pushback from residents and scrutiny from local officials. One of the proposals, located in Upper Hanover Township, was recently scuttled by a developer that cited such resistance.
In conversations with Spotlight PA, both Pennycuick and Thomas noted that the race isn’t just about data centers — each cited affordability as their top issue.
Still, Thomas said he feels the race “has been defined somewhat by data centers.” He attributed this to public sentiment against tech companies and concerns about the cost of living.
“People are tired of Big Tech and really just big industry coming into our communities, steamrolling folks, and then when they leave town, we’re the ones that are left to pick up the pieces,” he explained.
That feeling is clear from the ads inundating the 24th Senate District. Between Sept. 15 and Oct. 19 alone, Thomas and Pennycuick’s campaigns together spent about $9 million on TV or digital ads and mailers — the vast majority of their spending. (Some of those ad buys came in the form of in-kind contributions, in which supporters, in this case the candidates’ respective Senate party committees, spend on their behalf.)
Thomas, a volunteer firefighter and former middle school math and science teacher, has an ad that argues Pennycuick is “Big Tech’s best buddy in Harrisburg.” In others, Thomas vows to stop data centers from “driving up our utilities” and “make darn sure data centers pay their fair share.”
Pennycuick, a veteran who ran an aviation consulting business and served in the state House before her 2022 Senate win, is accusing Thomas of answering “to radical California donors and data center developers.”
Another pro-Pennycuick ad, from the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, says Thomas’ “real bosses are data center developers, not us.” A third, which touts Pennycuick’s anti-data-center work, says she “removed the fast-track language” from a pro-data-center bill and “stopped” it in her committee.
(The claim that Thomas works for data center developers is based on a disclosure in which he reported working for Gilmore & Associates, a civil engineering firm that consulted for Amazon on one of the corporation’s data center proposals in Bucks County. Thomas’ campaign said Thomas did “temporary” marketing and municipal-level advising for the firm after it had consulted on the Amazon project.)
“It’s gotten personal as a campaign,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Lehigh University and the director of the school’s Opinion Observatory. “You can see the attacks on character and ethics, but those are even being channeled through these issues: ‘Paid off by data center developer.’”
The anti-data-center argument has been trickier for Pennycuick to mount because her position on the facilities has changed. That ad about her removing fast-track language from a pro-data-center bill neglects to mention that the bill she modified and didn’t move in her committee was one she co-sponsored.
The measure, introduced in July of 2025, before the nationwide backlash against data centers picked up steam, was intended to give faster permitting to AI-related projects. It also would have banned municipalities from putting harsher zoning rules on data centers than other industrial developments. In February of this year, Pennycuick amended it to remove the provisions around both faster permitting and zoning. It hasn’t moved since, and with the session ending soon, is likely functionally dead.
Thomas’ campaign messaging has focused on that bill. Pennycuick told WHYY her position shifted as she learned more about the issue. Now she favors an approach tailored to individual communities.
“People are all over the map about data centers, from ‘absolutely want them,’ to ‘absolutely not,’ and everything in between,” Pennycuick told Spotlight PA. “For some locations, it’s never going to work.”
Sam Chen, a Lehigh Valley-based Republican political strategist, noted Pennycuick isn’t the only politician who has dramatically changed course on data centers.
“It’s an election season,” he said. “Everyone wants to claim the mantle of, ‘We’re against AI.’ They actually weren’t until they saw the huge blowback from the public.”
He added: “I think if you’re an incumbent that has backed this stuff, it’s a little bit late to kind of backtrack now.”
Overall, the data center positions of the two candidates are similar: Both want guardrails, not a moratorium.
After her fast-track bill, Pennycuick introduced a slate of legislation that would, among other things, require data centers to supply their own energy and prohibit public officials from signing secretive nondisclosure agreements with developers.
“Let the local community decide,” she said. “Don’t put them on every corner. They have a need in our society, but it has to be well thought out.”
Thomas has released a plan to mandate that the facilities bring their own energy to the state, and he suggested that data centers pay into local schools and infrastructure upgrades for the communities where they are located.
“We need to protect families from higher electric costs, force utility companies to be transparent, demand that our communities have an actual say in these decisions, and make Big Tech pay up,” he said in one of his ads.
‘Very hard to know what’s right’
All of this has left Maureen Garrett, a voter in the district, unsure what’s actually true about the two major party candidates who want to be her state senator.
Garrett, a 68-year-old retired physical therapist, is a registered Democrat who says data centers are a key issue for her. She lives close to Limerick Township, where there are two proposed data centers, and said her top issue is mitigating their environmental impacts.
Though she says she doesn’t watch much TV, Garrett says she’s been bombarded with targeted ads in the past month, particularly on Facebook pages she follows for groups that fight data centers in Pennsylvania.
“I saw so many attacks on both sides that it was very hard to know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t know what’s true,” Garrett told Spotlight PA.
That hasn’t stopped Garrett from making a choice about who to vote for — but she said the decision was mostly based on party platform, not the candidate. She declined to disclose who she chose but said she went for “the party that I think is going to fight the data centers the most” and “the party that is more concerned about environmental protections.”
There is little polling on state-level races, but a September survey from the legislature-focused nonprofit State Navigate showed Thomas with a two-point lead — within the poll’s four-point margin of error.
The race also has a Green Party candidate, Michael Schonewolf Jr., who the poll shows receiving 2% to 3% of the vote — something that could matter in a close contest.
(In late October, Schonewolf told WHYY he thinks data centers should be banned entirely.)
Borick, the Lehigh University political science professor, is watching this race closely, calling it a critical contest in deciding control of the upper chamber.
“It’s hard to imagine a path for Democratic control of the Senate if they can’t flip seats in this region,” he said.
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