Marty Jackley takes Meta’s money and leaves them unpunished and solvent to find new ways to manipulate humanity into consumer captivity. Big deal?
Really taking a stand against Big Tech are 22 (so far) Democratic Legislative candidates pledging to take seriously the clear message they say they’ve heard from voters: “South Dakota doesn’t want data centers.”
Yesterday District 9 House candidate Amanda Potter and District 32 Senate candidate Jeff Shelton announced the Data Center Accountability Pledge, by which they and their co-signers promise to take the following actions to stop Big Tech from building more power-sucking and soul-sucking AI infrastructure in South Dakota:
1. Day Zero Commitment: Before the first day of the 2027 legislative session, and continuing throughout the session, we will work with new and incumbent legislators to draft bills to protect everyday South Dakotans from data center costs, unfair utility burdens, and environmental harms caused by data centers.
2. Keep the money out: We soundly reject any financial interests that would promote development of data centers in South Dakota. We affirm that we have not taken, and will never take, any political contributions from individuals or organizations putting data centers over the interests and concerns of the people of South Dakota. Furthermore, we will not support any policies in favor of taxpayer money being used for data center construction, particularly in the form of tax incentives.
3. Promote transparency: We will work as a team to clearly communicate when legislators in Pierre are taking action on data centers. These communications may include press releases, social media and website updates, and other means of clearly explaining what’s being voted on during the legislative session.
4. Defend local control: We will oppose any effort to weaken or repeal local governments’ authority to regulate, pause, or ban data center development in their own communities. This is the authority South Dakota communities like Yankton are already using [Amanda Potter and Jeff Shelton, “Data Center Accountability Pledge,” retrieved 2026.08.27].
As of breakfast this morning, the D-CAP webpage lists the following signers (I sort by District number):
- Courtney Enfield, Candidate HD-1 (Brown, Day, Marshall, and Roberts Counties)
- Erin Ronayne Rudner, Candidate HD-3 (Aberdeen)
- Emelia Enquist, Candidate HD-4 (Clark, rural Codington, Deuel, Grant, Hamlin, and Roberts Counties)
- Garrett Campbell, Candidate HD-6 (Lincoln County)
- Austin Wolf, Candidate HD-6 (Lincoln County)
- Amanda Potter, Candidate, HD-9 (Sioux Falls/Hartford)
- Kathleen Brudvig, Candidate HD-10 (Sioux Falls)
- Aaron Matson, Candidate, SD-11 (Sioux Falls)
- Sonja Mentzer, Candidate HD-11 (Sioux Falls)
- Stephanie Arne, Candidate HD-12 (Lincoln and Minnehaha Counties)
- Joe Zweifel, Candidate SD-12 (Sioux Falls)
- Ali Rae Horsted, Candidate HD-13 (Sioux Falls)
- Erinn Williams, Candidate HD-14 (Sioux Falls)
- June CopperStad, Candidate HD-15 (Sioux Falls)
- Tim Rhead, Candidate HD-16 (Canton)
- Leslie Gerrish, Candidate HD-17 (Clay County and Union County)
- Austin Brunick, Candidate HD-17 (Union and Clay County)
- Karen Springer, Candidate HD-18 (Yankton County and Wakonda)
- Heidi Hora, Candidate HD-19 (Bon Homme, Hanson, Hutchinson, McCook, Turner Counties)
- Lewis GrassRope, Candidate HD-26B (Brule, Lyman, Hughes, Hyde, Jones, Buffalo Counties)
- Morgan Plucker, Candidate HD-31 (Lawrence County)
- Jeff Shelton, Candidate, SD-32 (Rapid in City)
These 22 Democrats are pledging to bring back 2026 House Bill 1301, a wide-ranging data-center regulation bill proposed by Representative Erin Healy (D-10/Sioux Falls) that included a one-year statewide moratorium on data-center construction. Republicans killed that moratorium in committee.
3 Democrats in the Senate and 19 in the House wouldn’t be enough to single-handedly pass anti-data-center legislation. But they could easily find allies across the aisle who share their suspicions about data centers and AI and coalesce working majorities to protect South Dakota from data centers.