Texas siting risk moves from the county to the capitol as both Senate candidates run at data centers

The two platforms do not share a single instrument. Paxton's four points include holding data center companies criminally liable for empowering AI chatbots found to undermine the safety of children, plus legislation barring Chinese technology from the buildout ^[1]. Talarico's list is a water reuse requirement, repeal of the state sales tax exemption, and a local veto over projects ^[2]. Those sets do not intersect ^[13], so a developer cannot hedge by picking a winner: both bodies of rules stay live until the November midterms resolve which one gets drafted ^[16].

What is absent from both, as reported, is arithmetic. The water requirement is described only as a fixed amount, with no amount, and no value is given for the exemption Talarico wants gone ^[12]. An unbounded number is harder to underwrite than a large one.

The fourth point in Paxton's plan is the one that matters to anybody holding a queue position. He promises to co-sponsor Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton's DATA Act, which would loosen federal regulation to encourage data centers to build their own off-grid supply ^[6]. Abbott's order this month sends the Public Utility Commission and the grid operator to audit projects seeking to connect ^[8], and the EPA said last month that power plants not connected to the public grid avoid some pollution restrictions ^[9]. Read together, behind-the-meter generation is the route that steps around the state audit and the federal pollution rule at the same time ^[17]. It does not step around the county. Among the complaints driving this politics are above-average air and noise pollution in mostly rural communities ^[15], and a generating plant inside the fence line is not quieter than a substation.

Paxton also promises to advocate fiercely for Abbott's own data center regulations ^[11], which sits badly beside the federal message of the same weekend. Abbott said the AI companies dug their own grave and got the backlash they deserved ^[7]. Trump, interviewed by his former fixer Michael Cohen, said data centers do not take power from the grid and that a community refusing one would be making a mistake, given the jobs and money ^[10]. The first is a permission slip for state rules; the second is a warning against writing them.

Texas hosts more data centers than any state but Virginia, per Data Center Map ^[4], and holds the flagship sites: OpenAI's Stargate at Abilene and SpaceX's Terafab in Austin ^[5]. Siting there has been a county-level negotiation with a tax abatement at the end of it. What is worth pricing now is the venue. Talarico's response to Paxton's plan was that it was a sad attempt to reverse course ^[3], which reads less as a rebuttal than as an opening bid on who restricts more.