Fans, part of a cooling system, are visible on the roof of a data center April 27, 2026, in Hillsboro, Oregon. A fight over data centers between supporters of the Platner campaign reveals a key, unresolved tension in the Democratic Party. Photo by Jenny Kane | Associated Press/File

You’ve got to make hard choices in politics.

And nowhere is this more the case than with the Democratic Party, both in New England and nationally, as it struggles to forge a coherent message in its bid to take Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.

Democrats can be either a green party that sees everything through the lens of environment-above-all-else activism, or one that champions an Ezra Klein-style “Abundance” agenda of economic growth, but they can’t be both.

That basic incompatibility of these two dueling visions can be seen in the tensions that erupted behind the scenes in the final weeks of Graham Platner’s doomed Maine Senate campaign.

Unions Thought They Knew Platner

Unions played a key role in getting the burly Maine oysterman’s campaign off the ground last year.

When they first met Platner, he portrayed himself as a middle-of-the-road person politically with a blue-collar background in the mold of a Joe Manchin or a John Fetterman, IBEW officials said.

But after Bernie Sanders became a big part of the campaign, Platner shifted sharply to the left.

“Our members had cooled down on his candidacy due to his social issues and silence while his supporters were so committed on issues that hurt our members in construction and utility,” IBEW Second District International Vice President Michael Monahan said.

Construction trade unions and other labor organizations helped staff phone banks, collect signatures, and do other crucial work, while pumping tens of thousands of dollars in contributions into Platner’s campaign coffers.

At a time of voter frustration with rising costs and the political status quo, the rough-around-the-edges Marine combat veteran appeared to be a promising candidate to take on long-time Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins.

Waffling on Key Jobs Issues

By spring, Platner emerged as the front-runner in the Democratic primary in a Senate contest that had gained national attention amid a national battle for control of the chamber in the upcoming midterm elections.

Yet behind the scenes, concerns were mounting among his construction union backers about Platner’s waffling and lack of any clear position on data center expansion and nuclear power.

The IBEW and other building trades unions are dead set against state moratoriums on new data centers, with these multibillion-dollar projects having become a leading source of new jobs. Yet in a mid-May interview with industry publication Heatmap, Platner stopped just shy of endorsing a data center moratorium, saying that he was open to “anything” that would slow the development of data centers.

And the Maine Senate candidate said he had no reservations at all about a data center moratorium during a meeting in early March with environmental groups.

Here’s from that Heatmap story by the outlet’s staff writer, Jael Holzman:

“During a March 6 interview with environmental activists considering whether to endorse the candidate, Platner was asked whether he supports a ‘halt’ to the fast-paced buildout of data centers. He was also queried on whether he would cosponsor legislation authored by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that would temporarily ban new data center projects. (The interview occurred before the bill was introduced.)

“‘Yes and yes. That’s probably the easiest question I’m going to get asked today,’ Platner replied, according to a recording of the internal conversation shared with me by [environmental activist group] Food and Water Action.”

Unions Confronted Platner

At their own meeting late last month with Platner, IBEW officials laid out their concerns about the candidate’s silence on nuclear power and lack of a clear position on data centers, officials said.

The union officials told Platner that the environmental groups that have become major supporters of his campaign are also the leading opponents of new power plants, transmission lines, and data center projects that the union’s members work on, IBEW’s Monahan said.

“His supporters are against rate increases to improve the grid, want to take the privately owned utility to a public state-owned utility, and anti-data center,” said Monahan, who served for years on the board of the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

In the end, the tug of war between construction union chiefs like Monahan and environmental activists over the direction of Platner’s campaign proved moot after the Maine Senate candidate bowed out following a rape accusation, the latest in a series of scandals that rocked the campaign.

Healey Faces Same Fights in MA

But you can find the same battles being waged here in Massachusetts between pro-development building trade unions and environmental activists.

And local Democrats, led by Gov. Maura Healey, don’t seem to be doing any better squaring this circle than their counterparts in Maine.

Healey has talked a good game about making Massachusetts a major AI hub.

But to the chagrin of construction unions, the governor is slow-walking the state’s only major data center proposal – a $4 billion complex slated for Westfield – amid opposition to the project from environmental groups.

Late last month, Healey ordered her administration to “pause” accepting tax break applications from companies and developers seeking to build data centers in Massachusetts while regulatory “guardrails” are put into place prevent an increase in electric rates and “harm public health and the environment.”

Scott Van Voorhis

In 2024, Massachusetts lawmakers passed the sales tax exemption for developers and companies looking to build data center projects.

Yet it’s not clear exactly what Healey is pausing, for nearly two years later, there has not been a single application for the data center tax break, state officials have acknowledged.

Like ill-fated Platner’s campaign, Healey and Democrats in Massachusetts are attempting to both play to the concerns of environmentalists while trying to hang onto the support of construction unions that depend on new development projects like data centers to keep their members working.

When it comes to Healey, the unions are saying all the right things on the record. Behind the scenes, there is considerable frustration among some union officials that Massachusetts has been all but written off by tech giants interested in building data centers. The frustration is not with Healey, per se, but rather what is seen as a state political culture in which environmental groups have a big say in whether projects move forward or not.

It doesn’t appear that Democrats’ gambit is working out any better here in Massachusetts than it did in Maine.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.