In rural eastern Nebraska, a technology revolution could rise from fields of corn and soybeans in the form of new data centers built to power the artificial intelligence boom.

But in many parts of the country, opposition has been building in ways that defy typical partisan boundaries. Conservative farmers and the state Sierra Club chapter recently found common cause against labor leaders as they filled the firehouse in Murdock — a village of about 275 people — to voice concerns about data center development moving too quickly.

The scene reflected an unlikely coalition worried about shrinking farmland, declining water supplies and rising electricity bills, as well as the prospect of massive corporations reshaping small-town America into nodes in a national network of computing warehouses.

The debate over data center projects is one of the rare modern issues to cut across party lines, demographics and geography — from Republican-dominated Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming to swing-state Pennsylvania and Democratic-leaning New Mexico.

Supporters of data centers, including Republican President Donald Trump and some union leaders who usually back Democrats, say the projects could bring a jobs and economic bonanza while helping the United States compete with China in the race for technological supremacy.

But hostility toward developments moving at breakneck speed has surged ahead of November’s midterm elections, forcing national, state and local elected officials to adjust to a shifting political landscape. The fight is not just about where servers get built; in many communities, it is becoming a test of who gets to decide how quickly industrial-scale projects can arrive and what burdens they place on land, water and the power grid.

Judy Stroy, a fifth-generation Nebraska farmer whose late husband grew corn and soybeans and whose son still does, said she worries that “the amount of ground that’s getting gobbled up every year” means “our food source is in trouble.”

“That should scare everyone,” she said.

Stroy’s fields sit just outside Murdock, a village named for a railroad official at the company that first laid tracks there in the 1890s. The community has a school, a post office, a bar, a Corn Grower’s State Bank branch and the Midwest Farmer’s Coop, where growers sell produce and buy feed and fertilizer.

Murdock is in Cass County, where officials recently approved a 12-month moratorium on allowing data center development. That move could freeze energy company Tenaska’s plans to potentially option more than 1,300 acres along Highway 75, south of the nearby villages of Murray and Beaver Lake, in a project activists fear could pave the way for a data center and its own natural gas power plant.

Tenaska spokesperson Leighton Elise Eusebio said the company has been exploring “the feasibility of developing power generation to serve large loads, whether that is a data center or other form of economic development.”

“We believe there are opportunities to work with public power, communities and other stakeholders to develop power generation that will benefit Nebraskans,” Eusebio said in a statement.

Meanwhile, data center operator CyrusOne has nearly 400 acres under its control outside another Cass County community, Plattsmouth, also along Highway 75, but no development has occurred and no project has been announced, according to a CyrusOne spokesperson.

The area may be seen as especially attractive because the highway has been widened, providing easy access to Omaha to the northeast and the college town of Lincoln to the southwest. The Missouri River is also a reasonably close major water source.

Some landowners have accepted large checks to sell. Local land typically can sell for $10,000 an acre, residents say, while developers sometimes offer four times that amount or more.

Those offers can be especially tempting as farming has become more expensive amid rising diesel prices and soybean exports that have fallen during Trump’s tariff fight with China, a major market for the crop.

“What if somebody offered me $40,000 an acre for my ground? It would be hard to turn down,” Stroy said.

Nebraska Sierra Club attorney Ken Winston said tech giants have made donations to municipal programs in Lincoln to help mitigate the impact of data centers.

“We need to be aware of the fact that they’re going to happen somewhere,” Winston said. “But communities need to be able to protect themselves and if they don’t want them, they should be able to say no.”

There is no development moratorium in New Mexico that could stop Project Jupiter, a $165 billion data center complex planned near the Mexican border, but concerns about dwindling water supplies are intensifying.

“It is not about blue vs. red, or whether we’re a purple state or county,” said Samantha Barncastle Salopek, a longtime water attorney who is running as a Republican for a seat on the Doña Ana County Commission partly because of the project.

“This is about the local community coming together and saying, ‘Hold on, hold on.’ We didn’t get enough information, and now we’re very concerned because also we have to cut back our water use anyway,” she said.

Barncastle Salopek, whose family grows pecans, said she regularly fields worried calls from farmers, ranchers and local business owners across the political spectrum and in other states.

“When we have to fight over the last piece of the pie, those big companies are going to win,” she said of pressure on remaining water supplies.

New Mexico has been battered by persistent drought, and large stretches of the Rio Grande have dried up in the central part of the state. The largest reservoir is at 1.3% capacity, levels not seen since the early 1970s, even though New Mexico is required to deliver more water to Texas under a recent settlement approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Activists worry that New Mexico’s pecan, chile and other farms could disappear, taking schools, hospitals and supporting businesses and incomes with them.

Oracle, which announced Project Jupiter, has offered funding for youth programs and pledged to invest $50 million in water and wastewater systems in Doña Ana County.

The company also plans to partner with an agriculture technology company to install sensors that provide real-time data to farmers so they can use water more efficiently, estimating eventual savings of 21 million gallons annually.

An Oracle spokesperson called the project a generational New Mexico investment, saying it would generate $4.7 billion in taxes and create more than 7,000 construction jobs and 1,500 long-term jobs while being designed to use little water over 15 years, given its closed-loop cooling and fuel-cell systems.

Still, the Center for Biological Diversity last week filed an emergency petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court challenging the state’s approval of well drilling to supply millions of gallons of water for Project Jupiter’s construction. The court on Sunday granted that request, halting authorization to use water from a new well until the legal fight is resolved.

During a recent protest in Santa Fe, demonstrators included Jesus Rodriguez, who traveled more than four hours from his micro-farm in southern New Mexico.

“The fact is that now the money has taken over,” Rodriguez said, describing himself as disillusioned with American politics. “Now it shows that the Democrats, Republicans, or whatever other party is involved, they don’t care about the land. They care about money. And that’s because they want power.”

Data centers have also found an ally in organized labor, including Mike Gage, president and secretary-treasurer of the Nebraska State AFL-CIO. Gage said he personally worries that some workers are seeing their jobs replaced by AI, but said the centers can also create construction jobs and longer-term positions for people operating the finished facilities.

“This problem is also a very big opportunity for some small communities,” Gage said. He noted that a data center built decades ago in Council Bluffs, Iowa, near Omaha, still employs about 60 people today.

Heather McKenzie, who works in labor relations in Lincoln, said more data centers in Nebraska could slow the exodus of skilled young people leaving the state.

“I don’t think that enough people understand that this is going to create really good jobs,” she said. “I think a lot of people view it in a negative sense because it’s being sprung on them.”

Chris Backemeyer, a Democratic congressional candidate in the district that includes Murdock and a former State Department employee, said he heard about Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates offering to host data centers for the U.S., which could concentrate technology outside the country.

“That scares the bejesus out of me,” Backemeyer said.

Trump has warned about China’s technology gains, and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said a federal pause on data center construction would be a “dangerous prospect.”

Even so, most registered voters oppose building a data center in their area, according to a July Fox News poll, including 60% of Republicans and 53% of MAGA voters.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a one-year ban on large data centers. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, also a Democrat, said his administration would no longer prioritize data center projects when issuing construction permits or granting developers lucrative tax exemptions if they do not meet certain standards.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a halt on approval of new data centers until audits determine their impact on the state’s electrical grid.

Abbott told ABC News that data centers had not been working in collaboration with state or local officials and had “basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve.”

The Republican Party’s Senate campaign arm is worried enough about the issue potentially deciding races in Ohio that it drafted a memo outlining how to respond. But politicians on both sides of the aisle have turned data centers into a punching bag.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican running for an open House seat, has pledged to halt their construction.

“If Silicon Valley wants to build their liberal empire, they can do it somewhere else,” he said in an ad.

That mirrors an ad from Scranton, Pennsylvania, Democratic mayor Paige Cognetti, who said “we are not for sale” when it comes to data centers. Cognetti is trying to unseat first-term Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan in a battleground district.

Trump remains unconcerned, saying that what data centers mean “for a community is jobs and lots of money and lower taxes.” The president has also conceded, however, that tech companies and developers maybe “can use a little public relations help.”

To ease fears about higher utility prices, Trump says his administration has urged data centers to build their own power plants.

Yet during a recent meeting in the conservative East Texas town of Tyler, residents complained of being forced to live in a “gas cloud” so data centers can get enough electricity.

The complaint echoed a similar objection from Kardal Coleman, who leads the Democratic Party in Dallas County. In a recent email, he criticized data centers for “replacing our jobs, polluting our air, and exacerbating the climate crisis, not to mention the noise disturbing our neighborhoods.”

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Montoya Bryan reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com