The latest campaign finance report for Governor Josh Shapiro covering June 9-September 14 became available this morning. Food & Water Watch analysis of the filings finds hundreds of thousands of dollars from investors and donors with ties to the AI, data center, and fossil fuel industries, including:

• $100,000 associated with Anthropic, all donated within the week leading up to Shapiro’s industry-friendly executive order on data center development on August 18;
• $100,000 associated with Clayco, a data center developer behind the controversial Project Jupiter in New Mexico;
• $25,000 from Constellation Energy Corporation, the fracking enterprise that struck a deal with Microsoft to power data centers with nuclear energy generated at Three Mile Island;
• $25,000 associated with Cozen O’Connor, a law firm that represented Talen Energy in its $18 billion deal with Amazon to power a data center in Pennsylvania.

This comes amidst widespread opposition to many dozens of hyperscale data centers proposed for Pennsylvania. Recent polling from Quinnipiac University found that 74 percent of Pennsylvania voters oppose AI data center construction in their community.

Megan McDonough, Pennsylvania State Director for Food & Water Watch, issued the following statement:

“Donors with skin in the data center game — whether building them, powering them, or brokering deals for them — gave Shapiro money leading up to and after he announced his shoddy executive order. Meanwhile, Pennsylvanians are telling him loud and clear that they do not want these projects forced into their communities. Shapiro claims to put those communities first, but his actions tell a different story: he’s keeping Pennsylvania open for sale.

“Pennsylvanians cannot trust Shapiro to stand up to an industry that’s writing him checks he’s happy to cash. We see clearly where his allegiances lie. But Pennsylvanians will not take less than a mandatory statewide data center moratorium and until that day, we’ll continue to fight for the protections we need and deserve!”