Above is a photo of J. Stuart Adams, President of the Utah State Senate, a deliberative body on which Adams has served since 2009. Here’s the New York Times on what just happened to him (make sure you read to the end for a fun twist):
Mr. Adams lost his Senate seat to Stephanie Hollist, a former university lawyer, who accused Mr. Adams and Utah’s political establishment of lacking transparency and ignoring their own voters by approving a data center project backed by the celebrity investor and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary.
The project, called the Stratos Hyperscale Data Center, would be colossal. At 60 buildings and 7.5-gigawatts of capacity, if constructed as planned, it could become one of the world’s largest data centers. The planned site would be a few miles north of the Great Salt Lake in Box Elder County, Utah. According to the New York Times, Adams chairs the agency that approved Stratos. He also spoke fondly of it, saying “With demand for secure infrastructure and energy rapidly increasing, this project supports the free world through reliable energy supply while creating real opportunity for communities here at home.”
A Change.org petition about Stratos with 28,563 signatures expresses concern about water and air quality, as well as quality of life. It reads in part, “With no local input for the past several months Utah state authorities have been discussing the project behind closed doors and only made the Box Elder County authorities aware of the project 1 week before expecting them to vote to approve or deny it.”
As opposition to Stratos grew during the lead up to this election, Adams reached out to O’Leary with a letter in which he demanded concessions.
In response to the demand letter I sent to @kevinolearytv, he agreed to all conditions.
Protecting Utah’s water, especially the future of the Great Salt Lake, remains one of my highest priorities. As a result of the letter, the project now includes a commitment of water that did… pic.twitter.com/o1ibr5ooRf
— President J. Stuart Adams (@JStuartAdams) June 4, 2026
O’Leary “agreed to all conditions,” according to Adams’ tweet. These included a reduction in the size of the data center, and an effort to preserve local water resources.
According to the Hill, news of the letter didn’t come in time to save Adams’ career. He became the first President of the Utah State Senate to ever lose a primary. Hollist, a Republican like Adams, is widely expected to win the general election in November.
Data center backlash has become a powerful force in American electoral politics, and it’s done so over the last five months, according to a recent study in Heatmap Pro. Congressional Republicans have signed an open letter calling on the FBI to investigate the possibility that widespread antagonism to data centers is a misinformation campaign tied to Chinese intelligence.
Read the full article here
