Big Tech Got the Tax Break. Statehouse Republicans Got the Postcards.

Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, chair of the Indiana House utilities committee, at a 2019 Statehouse bill signing. (Photo: Office of Gov. Eric Holcomb, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Rep. Becky Cash has started counting the mail. “The eighth postcard talking about this just hit the mailboxes, and every single postcard says the same thing, like, literally says the same thing,” the Zionsville Republican told the Indiana Capital Chronicle in a story published Friday.

Every one of those postcards is about data centers. Democratic mailers and online ads in targeted Indiana House districts claim Republicans “sold us out to data centers” and “gave data centers hundreds of millions,” and they promise to “end data center deals we pay for.” Republicans answer that the ads distort legislative votes and that local governments, not the Statehouse, get the final say on whether a project is built.

The stakes fit in one number. Republicans hold the House 70–30, and four Democratic pickups would break the two-thirds supermajority the GOP has kept since the 2012 elections, the margin that lets Republicans do business even if every Democrat walks off the floor.

On this issue, Hoosiers aren't split

Democrats didn't pick the fight at random. In the Free Press Indiana survey by Bellwether Research of 839 likely voters, taken Oct. 8–11, 69% opposed building new data centers in Indiana and just 18% favored it. Forty-nine percent said they were strongly opposed. The same poll put Gov. Mike Braun's approval at 38%, with 48% disapproving, according to the Capital Chronicle, and government corruption ranked as voters' top concern, just ahead of the cost of living, the Journal Review reported.

That's the uncomfortable part for the Statehouse. Nobody in the Democratic caucus wrote the 7% sales tax exemption on data center equipment. A Republican legislature enacted it in 2019, and Braun has stayed an advocate of data center projects even as officials in many Indiana cities and counties have voted moratoriums on them, the Capital Chronicle reported. Plenty of conservatives have been asking the same question the postcards ask: why does a trillion-dollar tech company get a break that the family paying the electric bill doesn't?

The chairman in the crosshairs

Nowhere is it hotter than House District 4 in Porter County, where 10-term Rep. Ed Soliday, R-Valparaiso, chairs the House utilities committee. He was already taking heat over rising electric bills before an August storm knocked out power to tens of thousands of NIPSCO customers. His Democratic challenger, Ryan Kominakis, is a union representative and steelworker at U.S. Steel's Gary Works who blames Soliday for higher bills and for sponsoring the 2019 sales tax exemption. Libertarian Travis Gearhart is also on the ballot.

“He's the most powerful man in the state, really, as far as making laws around the utilities,” Kominakis told the Capital Chronicle. Citing news reports that data center companies have benefited from more than $655 million in exemptions from state sales and other taxes, he added: “That number is only going to grow.”

Soliday isn't backing down. He says the Legislature has already responded to worries about electricity rates and water use. “The state provided an opportunity for locals by being competitive with other states,” he said. “It's a local decision, but that decision should be based upon the facts … But we are going through a hysteria right now, where at public hearings there is a lot of screaming.” Of his opponents: “They've got a horse and they're going to ride it.”

Down the road from Meta's $10 billion campus

The second front is the ring of Republican seats in the north Indianapolis suburbs, close to the LEAP District outside Lebanon, where Meta is building a $10 billion data center campus. Cash's District 25 rematch with Democrat Tiffany Stoner was the tightest House race in Indiana in 2024: Cash won by 64 votes out of more than 37,000 cast. Nearby, Rep. Danny Lopez, R-Carmel, faces Democrat Lindsay Gramlich; Rep. Hunter Smith, R-Zionsville, faces Democrat Racheal Bleicher; and Rep. Chris Jeter, R-Fishers, faces Democrat Stephanie Jo Yocum.

“I am not against data centers. I am against giving them a free ride,” Stoner said. Cash counters that she voted against several of the bills Democrats now call pro-data center and wasn't even in the Legislature when the 2019 exemption passed.

What the mailers don't answer, and what Republicans haven't either

Soliday's complaint is that the other side offers a slogan, not a plan, with no talk of what Democrats would do differently or how they'd get it done. That's a fair question for them. But “it's a local decision” isn't a full answer either, when the tax break that makes Indiana attractive to these projects was written at the Statehouse. Voters weighing these races can ask every candidate three things: how much sales tax revenue the 2019 exemption has cost so far, who pays for the power plants and transmission lines these campuses need, and whether any of it should be renegotiated before more projects are approved.

History favors the GOP. Democrats have fallen short of breaking the supermajority in each of the last six election cycles. This year they have candidates in 97 of the 100 House districts, which they say is the most since at least 2000, while Republicans left 20 sitting Democrats unchallenged, including 10 in Indianapolis and five in Lake County. Early voting is underway, and Election Day is Nov. 3.

Sources: Indiana Capital Chronicle, Oct. 16 (House races); Indiana Capital Chronicle, Oct. 15 (poll); Free Press Indiana/Bellwether topline results; Journal Review.

Written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers.