Home to the suburbs surrounding Lake Minnetonka, and one of the wealthiest regions of the state, House District 45A may seem like a long shot for Democrats. But the region has flipped back and forth between parties in recent years and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party holds two of the other legislative seats in the area. So why not all three?
These were the stakes at a candidates forum late last month for DFLer Tracey Breazeale and incumbent Republican state Rep. Andrew Myers. During the forum, they argued pocketbook issues like health care and housing as well as data centers.
On data centers…
Breazeale and Myers expressed similar worries about the impact of data centers in their district.
Breazeale said she was concerned over how data centers will impact local energy supplies and water infrastructure.
“I think this is an area where we want to get out ahead of it,” she said. “We want the state to be able to think about what types of legislation can we put in place to make sure that data centers are not impacting local water, that they have to find their own cooling systems, that they supply their own renewable energy and that that’s done in a way that is not negatively impacting the residents.”
Myers added, “We would like to have a little bit more knowledge, information. What’s the energy consumption going to look like? What’s the water use going to look like? And we don’t want that to impact utility costs in our own community.”