Q&A with Writer, Teacher, and State Senate Candidate Elizabeth Ferris

Why Big Tech’s Data Center Boom Threatens Local Control and What States Can Do About It

At NextGen Competition, we are working to create a fair and competitive technology ecosystem that empowers consumers, workers, and small businesses. Fighting against the market and political power of the largest corporations is key to this mission. We need legislators who understand this challenge and are willing to take on corporate monopolies.

Elizabeth Ferris is a Democratic candidate for State Senate in West Virginia’s 15th District. A writer, teacher, part-time docent at the Ice House in Berkeley Springs, volunteer with the Morgan Arts Council, and devoted congregant at Bethel Lutheran Church, where she co-chairs a committee that helps provide homeless residents with a warm bed, Ferris has made community priorities central to her campaign. To learn more about Elizabeth, visit her campaign website.

It’s great to chat with you, Elizabeth. You’re running for the West Virginia State Senate at a time when technology, energy, and economic development are increasingly intertwined. What motivated your campaign, and how do these issues show up in your district?

Thanks for the opportunity to speak with your audience! In a nutshell, I’m motivated by the desire to see better representation in our state house that is more responsive to the everyday needs of our communities.

It’s no secret that West Virginia faces a lot of systematic challenges. We’re currently facing a school funding crisis and a precipitous decline in K-12 enrollment throughout the state. My region, the Eastern Panhandle, is mostly bucking the statewide trend of population decline and student enrollment shrinkage, but we have our own set of challenges. Our public schools struggle to retain qualified teachers and faculty because we border Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, all of which offer $10,000-$25,000 more annually to their teachers. Teachers are being actively recruited out of our classrooms and into school systems across state lines. A shocking number of our classes are taught by long-term substitutes, not certified teachers.

Public schooling is just one example, but I think it’s emblematic of a larger failure at the state level to make the kind of human-capital investments that are vital to building a West Virginia that offers a good quality of life and that can attract people and economic development in a meaningful, sustainable way.

The Eastern Panhandle is ground zero for West Virginia’s data center push, including Penzance Management’s planned $4 billion, 600-megawatt campus in Berkeley County’s Falling Waters District. What’s your take—are these projects the economic lifeline the state says they are, or is something being lost in the rush? Communities often say these projects are negotiated behind closed doors, with limited transparency. What specific policies would you support to increase transparency and accountability?

The particular data center you reference, which is in my district, is the first project approved under the legal framework established by House Bill 2014, passed in 2025 by our state legislature at the urging of our governor Patrick Morrisey. HB2014 explicitly exempts data centers from all local planning laws and ordinances and allows the impact studies for these centers to remain off the public record. It is the only law of its kind in our nation as far as I’ve been able to ascertain.

I’m cautiously open to the idea that in the right places, with appropriate guardrails and opportunity for local input, AI Data Centers could be part of West Virginia’s economic development strategy. The mistake I fear we are making is the speed at which we are approving these resource-intensive projects and the lack of a consistent, publicly declared set of standards to protect property values, water and air quality, and electricity rates.

The first thing that needs to happen is that we need to restore local control and make impact studies public. Many parts of the Eastern Panhandle are experiencing extremely fast development that has caused dissatisfaction for long-term residents. We’re searching for ways as a region to support good growth while preserving our natural beauty and quality of life. Having a law like HB2014 that undermines local control sets us back in that effort.

One of your core campaign priorities is restoring community control over data centers. These high-impact facilities require massive amounts of electricity to run and millions of gallons of water to keep cool. Can you explain the threats these data centers pose to West Virginia’s groundwater and local utility costs if they go unregulated?

Data centers have of course been around for decades. What’s new, and what we’re dealing with particularly in West Virginia, is the rapid development of data centers designed to serve the computing needs of the AI industry. By their nature, these projects use more water and electricity than any projects of their kind before. Concerns include their impact on electricity bills, which can be mitigated by requiring these centers to produce their own power, and water usage, which can be lessened by requiring the use of evaporative cooling technology. Beyond that, people are rightfully concerned about the impact on air and water quality for those living near these projects. So appropriate regulation is key to protect the public.

We must require these facilities be located on environmentally appropriate sites, produce their own power, use the most up-to-date water-saving technologies, and have publicly available plans in place for maintaining the health and safety of nearby residents. I understand that such regulations can slow down the development of these projects, but the long-term downsides are too great not to plan for. And it’s what the people living near these projects deserve from their government.

The companies behind these data centers—firms like Penzance, which also develops projects leased to Amazon—are ultimately serving a handful of Big Tech giants: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. These same corporations wield enormous political and economic power nationally. They spend heavily on lobbying, fund PACs, and shape the rules that govern their own industries. Do you think voters in West Virginia fully understand how that concentrated corporate power connects to the decisions being made in Charleston about their communities?

Voters are beginning to understand the influence that big money plays in our politics. We’re currently in the middle of one of the most contentious primary cycles in memory—possibly ever—in West Virginia. A lot of that contention is being fueled by a massive influx of out-of-state PAC money. I read a report that out-of-state spending on the primary in West Virginia is usually around $100,000. This year, it’s expected to be $2 million. There is a faction of Republicans, led in part by our governor, who want to see Republican legislators who have not agreed with the executive branch on certain policies be unseated. I’ve heard from Republican neighbors who have received up to three mailers a day attacking these Republicans from PACs with ties to our governor. It’s yet to be seen how this will play out in the results of our primary, which is on May 12, but I’ve been heartened by the media attention this issue has received locally and the number of West Virginians who are expressing their desire to get this kind of money out of our politics.

When people hear “antitrust” or “anti-monopoly,” it can sound abstract or like a Washington, D.C. issue. But the effects of concentrated corporate power show up in very concrete ways—in what people pay for groceries, broadband, and prescription drugs, and in whether local businesses can compete. How would you explain to a voter in Romney or Berkeley Springs why competition policy matters to their daily life?

People may not use the word “monopoly” or say they need more antitrust enforcement, but they very much understand we are limited both as consumers and workers in rural areas in West Virginia. In my town, we have only two options for prescriptions, one grocery store, and only one major option for broadband (unless you want to go with satellite internet). People are aware that they have less opportunity to compare prices or compare job opportunities when they are limited by these local options. They know that limited options mean less freedom of choice and that they would like that to change. It would be my job as a state senator to make sure I deliver on giving people more choices for where and how to spend their money and where and how to get work.

Do you see a role for states in addressing monopoly power, or should that be left entirely to federal regulators?

We are in a heyday of state enforcement of antitrust right now. We are seeing our neighbors, like North Carolina and Tennessee, fight to make sure the antitrust laws on the books are being enforced in cases like the Ticketmaster suit. There are also several ways states can enforce competition laws that the federal government cannot. For instance, we can make sure that intra-state commerce is fair, while the federal government can only focus on inter-state commerce. Just because discrimination is happening within state lines does not mean it should be ignored.

There’s also a lot of public sentiment in West Virginia for breaking up utility monopolies. West Virginians face some of the highest utility costs in the nation, with many West Virginians paying more for water and power than for their mortgage. Protecting ratepayers from unfair or unnecessary hikes should be a priority of every elected official regardless of party.

West Virginia’s legislature is overwhelmingly Republican—32 to 2 in the Senate. As a Democrat running in a tough district, how do you plan to build coalitions and find common ground on issues like corporate accountability and community protection? Are there areas where you think this fight transcends party lines?

I just had a great email exchange earlier this week with a voter in my district who was a life-long Democrat, from a family of life-long Democrats, until about a decade ago when they switched party affiliation. They consider themselves more socially conservative, so that was one of the reasons for their changing allegiance, but the biggest thing that stood out about our exchange was that they lost faith in the Democratic Party as a party that was willing to fight corruption and stand up against corporate abuses.

So, yes, I think there are a lot of issues on which we can and should be transcending party lines. Most of my neighbors are Republicans, and I have great relationships with my neighbors built on the values of community care and mutual respect. We can get beyond some of this gridlock and tackle issues that most Americans agree on (getting big money out of politics, enacting some sort of term limits, banning political stock trading, tackling massive wealth inequality). But we have to be smart and open-hearted about how we do it. I’m not saying that Democrats need to become socially conservative or betray their values. I’ve stood in rooms as a candidate defending the dignity of my trans friends, where that made me very unpopular. But I am saying we shouldn’t write off our neighbors based on a single belief or a past vote.

You know firsthand what it’s like to come home exhausted and still worry about groceries. As tech monopolies grow and heavily influence labor markets, how will you protect workers’ rights in Charleston and ensure that new tech or data jobs coming to the state offer fair pay and safe working conditions?

I am not ignorant of the fact that there is a balance between appropriate regulation and regulation that creates unnecessary barriers for businesses, especially small businesses. What’s clear to me is that regulations for worker pay and safe conditions cannot be on the chopping block. Multiple studies have demonstrated that states that suppress union activity have lower wages than states that don’t. These studies have shown not just a correlative relationship here, but a causative one. That is, when the state makes it harder for workers to unionize, it causes lower wages.

Less than two weeks ago, on April 22, two workers died in a chemical leak in Nitro, West Virginia. Seventeen West Virginians died on the job from work-related accidents in 2025. Charleston is always looking for ways to incentivize new business development in the state. This is a good thing. But as a state senator, I would make sure the businesses we’re inviting in have a demonstrated history of providing good pay and strong safety practices.

What other issues are driving your campaign, and what else would you like to share with our readers about why you’re the right person to represent District 15?

There’s a state delegate here in West Virginia named Kayla Young who says she wants to “make state government boring again.” In my opinion, there are too many people using state capitols as political theater for their personal ideologies. I’m running to bring pragmatism and solutions back to state government. I’m a bridge builder and an outcomes-driven person. I have a broad, holistic vision of steps we can and should take to make meaningful progress in West Virginia.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to having more conversations like this throughout your campaign and, hopefully, soon as a member of the West Virginia State Senate.