Data Center Money Enters Kansas Governor’s Race

A new pro-data center super PAC is spending more than $1.5 million to help Kansas state Sen. Ty Masterson in the governor’s race, according to NBC News, which reported the details Monday and cited a person familiar with the buy.

The group is Building the Future, an offshoot of the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future, NBC reported. That matters because it shows how a fight that can sound technical or local — tax policy, utility strain, water use, land use — is now drawing direct electoral spending from an industry network built around the AI boom.

Data centers have become a live political issue precisely because they are not abstract. They need land, large amounts of electricity and, often, significant water resources. That has pushed the argument out of planning meetings and into statewide campaigns.

NBC reported that Masterson, a Republican, has opposed moratoriums on data center development and defended a 2025 law he voted for that provided a sales tax exemption for data center investments. His Democratic opponent, state Sen. Cindy Holscher, also voted for that law but has since called for a statewide moratorium on the developments.

Holscher responded by calling Masterson a “stooge for Big Tech” who wants “to put a data center on every corner and in every cornfield.” She also argued that he would give the companies tax breaks while ordinary Kansans’ costs rise. That is campaign rhetoric, not an established accounting of what would happen, but it lands on the actual pressure point in these fights: whether states competing for investment end up shifting the costs of infrastructure and incentives onto residents.

Masterson did not immediately comment to NBC News.

Kansas is one of the few Democratic-controlled governorships Republicans have a chance to flip this fall, according to NBC’s report, which also noted that the Cook Political Report rates the race as leaning Republican. The spending does not decide the contest. It does make the shape of it plainer: data center policy is no longer just a legislative or regulatory dispute. It is campaign money, too.