Latest / Best of: Features / AI fears are fueling progressive Democrat's campaign in Michigan battleground district

Transcript

AI fears are fueling progressive Democrat's campaign in Michigan battleground district · Best of: Features

• 0:05
  AI fears are fueling Progressive Democrats campaign in Michigan Battleground District. Written
• 0:11
  by Nicholas Ricardi. This article is being read by an automated voice,
• 0:16
  generated by Everlet. Mason Michigan, the AP. Emerson Hyde
• 0:22
  and Dan Ewart, both Republicans, stood outside a contentious city council meeting
• 0:27
  earlier this week in the central Michigan town of Mason, and grappled
• 0:30
  with the fact that the most prominent person to stand with them
• 0:33
  against a possible artificial intelligence data center was the local Democratic candidate
• 0:38
  for Congress. Hyde Seventy, a farmer and former construction worker, said he
• 0:44
  is supporting thirty six year old Will Lawrence, a longtime liberal activist
• 0:48
  who until recently was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America,
• 0:51
  instead of incumbent Representative Tom Barrett, a Republican who has not flatly
• 0:56
  opposed the Mason Project. He's been out to my house several times,
• 1:00
  Hyde said of Lawrence. Ewart forty three, a fellow opponent of the
• 1:05
  Data Center project, was startled to hear that. After all, Republicans have
• 1:09
  tried to turn Lawrence into a national symbol of democratic radicalism because
• 1:13
  he once called for an end to fossil fuels, defunding the police
• 1:16
  and maintaining open borders. Lawrence has said a lot of crazy stuff,
• 1:20
  Ewart said. I don't trust him. Hyde wasn't convinced. Right now, what's
• 1:25
  a bigger fight, a data center or socialism? Data centers are the
• 1:30
  leading example of how Lawrence is trying to defy expectations in a
• 1:33
  classic swing district by harnessing unease over the rapid pace of artificial
• 1:38
  intelligence's development, which has created anxieties that hopscotch ideological lines and could
• 1:43
  upend the nation's politics. It's also created an opening for a wake
• 1:48
  of leftist Democrats like Lawrence, who have long argued that their outsider,
• 1:52
  anti corporate message can have broader appeal than the moderate establishment. Lawrence
• 1:58
  has widened his aim to the entire AI industry, calling for a
• 2:02
  pause on AI development in the wake of fears from some at
• 2:05
  the companies that the technology could eliminate humanity. We need to put
• 2:09
  a stop to this, because right now The whole thing is out
• 2:12
  of control and alarm bells are going off, Lawrence said at a
• 2:16
  press conference where he also urged the halting of data center construction.
• 2:21
  Democrat Let's DSA membership lapse rejects ideological label. The co founder of
• 2:26
  the aggressive environmental group The Sunrise Movement, Lawrence is not like the
• 2:30
  candidates who normally triumph in Michigan's evenly divided seventh congressional distract the
• 2:36
  previous Democrat to have represented the district is currently Michigan's junior senator
• 2:40
  Elisa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and steadfast moderate. Lawrence once
• 2:46
  pleaded online for moderate Democrats to hurry up and die. He wants
• 2:51
  to show up and talk about data centers all day to district
• 2:54
  from the vulnerability he has on abolishing the police and the border.
• 2:58
  Barrett, who is seeking a second term, said in an interview. Lawrence
• 3:02
  bristled at that charge, noting that he's been protesting data centers since
• 3:07
  last fall when a wave of new projects was proposed across the
• 3:10
  district and the state. I'm talking about it because I give a
• 3:14
  damn about the people of this district, Lawrence said in an interview.
• 3:18
  My whole career is about fighting back against corporate power, standing with
• 3:23
  regular working people who are getting screwed over. Lawrence says he has
• 3:27
  moved on from many of his previous stances and online postings, including
• 3:31
  defunding the police or having open borders. A suggestion he said was
• 3:35
  made during more of a performance. He declines to identify himself any
• 3:39
  more as a socialist, saying an ideological label leads to division. He
• 3:44
  led his membership in the DSA, whose Lansing chapter a member has
• 3:47
  said was founded in the living room of the building where Lawrence
• 3:50
  lived after college, lapsed this summer. Lawrence's campaign said he was not
• 3:55
  present at the founding. Some Republicans could not believe their luck when
• 4:00
  Lawrence beat two more traditional candidates in August's Democratic primary. We think
• 4:06
  it's a comical mistake by the Democratic establishment to let somebody like
• 4:09
  him slip through, said Ty Bamarito, chair of the Michigan College Republicans,
• 4:14
  and a senior at Michigan State University, the fifty one thousand student
• 4:18
  institution in Lawrence's hometown of East Lansing. But other observers warned against
• 4:24
  underestimating Lawrence, who made a mark in The primary by energetically stumping
• 4:29
  across the district, which stretches from Detroit's furthest exurbs to farming communities
• 4:34
  west of the state capital of Lansing, and has continued at a
• 4:37
  frenetic pace leading into the general election. There's more energy in this
• 4:42
  Lawrence campaign than I've seen for a very, very long time, said
• 4:45
  Ling Brewer, an eighty one year old former Democratic state lawmaker in
• 4:49
  Lansing. The excitement in this town I think equals that for Obama
• 4:53
  when he first ran. Night now I'm kind of a one-issue voter.
• 4:58
  Lawrence has spent plenty of time with students on Michigan State's sprawling
• 5:02
  campus, but he's also become a staple at meetings of residents, often
• 5:06
  farmers or other rural denizens, fighting Data Centers proposals. Water rich Michigan,
• 5:12
  whose Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer embraced the industry initially, has seen a
• 5:16
  wave of potential projects over the past year. On the night of
• 5:20
  the Mason Council meeting, Lawrence had to pass on appearing at a
• 5:24
  simultaneous Township Council meeting, on the opposite side of his district, to
• 5:29
  stand against a different potential project there. Lawrence, wore a cap in
• 5:33
  the same shade of red as President Donald Trump's campaign hats, but
• 5:37
  with the phrase No Data centers in Mason, instead of Make America
• 5:41
  Great Again. The standing room only meeting was full of people wearing
• 5:44
  identical caps. Lawrence's reliable opposition to data centers has won him support
• 5:50
  from some unexpected quarters in the town of eight thousand. I'm sure
• 5:53
  I disagree with a whole lot of his policies. Zach Bartels, forty
• 5:57
  eight, who identified himself as a conservative independent, said of Lawrence, but
• 6:02
  right now I'm
• 6:03
  kind of a one issue voter. Patrick Lind, fifty one, regularly votes
• 6:07
  Republican, but he's not sure if he will this year. The partisan
• 6:11
  issue is going to be a lot less important than the data
• 6:13
  center issue, Lind said. Ashley Wickham, thirty eight, says she's never been
• 6:18
  involved in politics and hadn't voted in a congressional primary before last
• 6:22
  month's, which was open to any voter regardless of party affiliation. She
• 6:27
  cast her ballot for Lawrence, noting that he's been to almost every
• 6:30
  anti data center event over the past year. I'm definitely going to
• 6:35
  support him, because he supported me, said Wickham, who bought a house
• 6:39
  in Mason, just before the potential data center was announced last November.
• 6:44
  At the time the city said there was not an official proposed
• 6:47
  project, but disclosed, it was in discussions to annex four hundred and
• 6:51
  five neighboring acres where a company could build a one billion dollars
• 6:55
  hyperscale facility. The community has been convulsed with opposition ever since. Both
• 7:01
  candidates say they want AI limits but to different degrees. Lawrence scolded
• 7:06
  the council members, who sat stoically through dozens of speeches. They say
• 7:10
  there's a significant chance that all human beings may be killed by
• 7:14
  what they're building, what they want to build In Mason, Lawrence said
• 7:18
  How hard is it to just listen to the residents and just
• 7:20
  say no? Lawrence threw barbs at Barrett, whom he has slammed for
• 7:25
  accepting donations from technology firms and voting last year for a version
• 7:29
  of Trump's tax and budget bill that would have banned any state
• 7:32
  from regulating AI for ten years. The provision was removed from the
• 7:37
  final version of the bill, a Representative of Barrett's office read a
• 7:41
  statement from the Congressman, who was in Washington and could not attend
• 7:45
  the meeting. The statement reiterated Barrett's view that local officials should decide
• 7:50
  on data centers rather than the federal government. In the interview, Barrett
• 7:55
  said he also favors limits on AI, and the twenty two year
• 7:58
  Army veteran noted that he's proposed legislation banning its use on the
• 8:02
  battlefield. Outside the Mississippi Council chamber, Ewart said he's urged Barrett
• 8:08
  to come out more forcefully against the project, and warned the Congressman
• 8:12
  about local disappointment with him. Ewart narrowly lost a Republican primary last
• 8:17
  month to represent the area in the state legislature, and he warned
• 8:21
  that voters shouldn't gamble on Lawrence even if they oppose data centers.
• 8:25
  The question is how fast the socialism comes in, Ewart said.