From boom to backlash: Ga. election brings a reckoning for data centers

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Georgia once courted data centers as the future. Now, they’re the fight.In the same election that ushered in a national wave of Democrats promising to crack down on AI and data centers, Georgia voters put two key levers of power into the hands of skeptics: Gov.‑elect Keisha Lance Bottoms.A new Democratic majority on the Georgia Public Service Commission.They’re stepping into an economy where server farms are already in the works — from a Google complex planned near I‑20 in Columbia County to a massive QTS facility along Gordon Highway in Augusta.A governor-elect who wants to hit ‘pause’On the campaign trail, Bottoms did something relatively few Southern governors have dared: she promised to slow down data center construction, not speed it up.She has said she’ll sign an executive order imposing a temporary moratorium on new data center approvals. The pause that could last from a month to six months or longer while her administration studies next steps.Georgia, she says, i