The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time 21-TIME! Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer.
If you missed Part I of this conversation, find that episode here:
As we get closer and closer to the Nov. 3 election, there’s been an issue that’s continued to emerge as an especially contentious one – data centers.
Perhaps more specifically, it’s been the type of hyperscale AI data centers that are being proposed or built all over the country, including here in Wisconsin.
From a political standpoint, a broad opposition to these data centers has emerged in a big way, with the most recent polling from the Marquette University Law School showing that 78% of voters say the costs outweigh the benefits for these mega-projects, and only 21% saying the benefits outweigh the costs.
And this issue is one that does not necessarily cut along traditional political lines. While Democratic voters have become the most opposed to data centers, almost two-thirds of Republican voters are against data centers, and about 80% of independent voters are against them, too.
In the months since polling on data centers has tipped this way, we’ve seen politicians up and down the ballot — from the governor’s race to all sorts of Senate and Assembly races — highlight data centers as a top issue, be it on the campaign trail or in attack ads or whatever it might be.
But part of what might be missing from this larger conversation on data centers is a dialogue on what is actually happening in Wisconsin when it comes to data centers.
So, I’m hosting a two-part conversation on this issue with Wisconsin journalists who are covering this from different angles. This is not to advocate for any one side of this — you can probably guess where I stand, frankly — but to better understand a complex and polarizing issue.
For this part of the conversation, my guest is Chali Pittman, a journalist from Madison who is currently a staff writer at the Isthmus, was formerly the News & Talk Director at WORT, and is my former colleague at Civic Media, when she was the News Director and I was the Political Editor. In the months when we worked together, we talked about data center politics often, and since, separate from all of your other work, Chali launched a Substack newsletter called Data Processor, which is taking a look at this issue in a really unique way.
You should really subscribe there, I must say:
For a beat-by-beat breakdown of this episode, see these titles and timestamps below.
00:00 – Intro: Data Centers Become an Election Issue
01:42 – Meet Chali Pittman of Isthmus and the Data Processor Newsletter
02:28 – Why She Started Data Processor
04:45 – A Policy Deep Dive: Zoning, Land Use, and Energy Regulation
06:21 – What Surprised Her Most: It’s Really About Energy
08:00 – Rising Bills, Fossil Fuel Plants, and Renewable Energy Limits
10:18 – Tiffany, the Becky Transmission Line, and Rural Opposition
14:21 – Strange Bedfellows: The Caledonia Plan Commission Meeting
18:18 – The Big-Tent Opposition and the David Wallace-Wells Essay
20:34 – NDAs, Tax Credits, and TIF: Economic Development Tools Stretched to Fit
23:43 – “Speed and Scale” and Not All Developers Are Alike
26:50 – Pitting Communities Against Each Other: The DeForest Case
28:21 – Towns, Villages, Annexation, and Generational Land Use Fights
30:42 – QTS Pulls Out and the Village PR Problem
32:17 – The Moratorium Debate: Francesca Hong’s Campaign Impact
33:51 – What Other States and Wisconsin Counties Have Done
37:44 – Crowley vs. Tiffany: “Local Control” and Renewable Energy Promises
41:06 – Where Does This Go Next? Lawmakers, Voters, and Civic Engagement
44:16 – The Data Processor Book Club: Reading List on AI and Energy
48:53 – Wrap-Up and Where to Subscribe
Dan Shafer is an independent journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He worked with Civic Media from 2024 to 2026. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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Follow Dan Shafer on Twitter at @DanRShafer, at BlueSky at @danshafer.bsky.social, and on Threads at @danshafer.
