Data center and tight state senate race drive Hermantown voters to polls
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The Hermantown city council’s controversial vote Friday night to approve Google’s plan to build a massive data center in town appears to be driving high election day turnout in the city outside of Duluth.
At the Hermantown Government Services Center, a steady stream of voters went inside to cast their ballots all day long, and turnout appeared very strong. That’s not unusual in Hermantown, where voter turnout tends to be very high — typically over 80 percent, even for non Presidential midterm elections like this one.
And virtually every voter who spoke with MPR News reporter Dan Kraker said the data center is a very important issue. And this held true for both liberal Democratic voters as well as conservative Republicans.
Jack Liabraaten, 81, said he voted Republican and that immigration is a big issue for him. And like many Hermantown voters, he was wearing a “No Data Center” button.
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"It's just one of those things that's being shoved down our throats,” Liabraaten said. “We'll be about three miles from it, and a lot of the people that are not affected that much by it, of course, they want it because it's jobs and stuff like that. But there's plenty of places to put the data centers without putting them in semi-residential areas.”
Lifelong Hermantown resident Leann Fahlsing said she is angry with city officials for how they handled this project. Several of them signed non-disclosure agreements, keeping details about the project secret, and local residents in the dark for months.
"I personally don't know if I'm for or against the data center,” Fahlsing told MPR News. “But what I am against is the lack of transparency, the idea that a lot of this happened underground, basically, before anybody knew anything that was happening. And in my mind, they have already made the decision before anything was brought to the public."
The data center proposal, which is now being challenged in court, is is a big issue in city council races in Hermantown. Three political newcomers are running for seats on the council, and each says they were motivated to run by the data center. They've all criticized the city for a lack of transparency around the development.
Hermantown is also home to one of state legislative races that could decide which party controls the state legislature.
The battle for senate district 3 is a rematch of the 2022 race, in which Democratic state senator Grant Hauschild narrowly won by just 703 votes over Republican Andrea Zupancich, who is the mayor of Babbitt. The district is huge geographically, stretching from the townships surrounding Duluth, up the North Shore of Lake Superior and west along the Canadian border.
This race is expected to be very close, and one common theme voters from both parties shared is their disgust for all the negative ads that have inundated them. Outside groups trying to sway voters have spent well over one million dollars on the race.
"Why can't people just come out, say what they stand for, say what they want, say what they want to do and not have to pick at the person they're running against?” asked Lori Rossiter of Hermantown, who said she voted Democratic. “I mean, can't we be adults and Americans and be kind to people and just say what you want to do?”
