Missouri voters appear to be recalling city councilors over data center support

Voters in Independence, Mo., on Tuesday appeared to oust a city council member who supported billions of dollars in tax breaks for a data center, one of the first such removals amid a growing national backlash against the giant warehouses that power artificial intelligence.

In the First Ward of Independence, 1,118 residents voted to recall John Perkins, while 525 voted against the recall. Jackson County Board of Elections website. According to the regional council, only a handful of ballots remained.

Mr. Perkins, who was years away from re-election, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He previously told The New York Times that the recall argument had “no merit” and that “a single vote” should not outweigh his constituents’ years of work.

McKenna Cobb, 31, one of the organizers of the appeal, said she spent Tuesday knocking on doors and driving community members to the polls. The vote showed that “our votes matter and these smaller elections really matter,” she added.

In recent months, public interest in data centers, which are full of computers that require huge amounts of energy, has increased. Voters are increasingly worried about higher electricity prices, environmental damage and disruption to their communities.

The opposition has already affected other elections. Last year, two Republican members of the Georgia Public Service Commission lost their seats over concerns about rising electricity prices, which many attributed to data centers in the state. And many expect that sentiment could influence November’s midterm elections.

In Independence, a city of 121,000 next to Kansas City, residents didn’t wait and instead forced a recall vote Tuesday. Dutch company Nebius bought land on the outskirts of the city last year and then applied for billions of dollars in tax breaks for the project. City officials said they believe it would be a boon for a place that has struggled financially and filled city coffers with money for education and infrastructure.

In March, Mr. Perkins joined four other City Council members to provide more than $6 billion in tax breaks to the $150 billion Nebius project. At the time of the vote, he said the city had been trying to develop the land for years and that it had negotiated to protect residents from fluctuations in energy prices.

But appeal organizers said Mr. Perkins had failed to engage the public while the city negotiated with Nebi. They saw it as part of a longer history of failed economic development projects in the city.