In June, Virginia’s Democrat-run General Assembly passed a budget that kept the data center sales tax exemption in place. House Appropriations Chairman Luke Torian, a Democrat, said Republicans were part of the process, but the Democrat majorities carried it. Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) said the budget “positions the Commonwealth to be a national leader on data centers.” Loudoun County alone already had about 233 data centers built or under construction as of March 1.
Three months later, the Democrat who represents Loudoun in Congress said the quiet part. “We put too many data centers here.” That is Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA-10), who says he lives “in the center of data center alley,” telling DC News Now what his voters already know. The interview covered his Sept. 8 rollout of four bills, held outside an Ashburn school next to the Alley. Eight weeks before Election Day.
And who does he want to fix it? Washington. At that rollout, he urged the Department of Homeland Security to consider helping bury transmission lines. One of his bills would direct the Secretary of Energy to establish best practices for siting data centers. “Congress and the federal government need to get involved,” he told Fox News on Oct. 4.
Homeland Security and Energy are President Donald Trump’s departments. The same congressman, at the same Sept. 8 event, said “President Donald Trump keeps telling us that data centers are a golden goose. Well, I think they’re becoming a Trojan horse for our community.” In the Committee’s view, that is the whole act in one afternoon. Call data centers a Trojan horse while saying Trump calls them a golden goose, then ask Trump’s cabinet to clean up a mess your own party’s majority just kept subsidizing.
So what do the bills actually do? One would have the Energy Secretary “create a method for siting data centers.” Another would set standards for measuring how much power and water they use. A third would make data centers pay for the grid upgrades they require. His proposal calls for keeping data centers and power lines away from homes, schools and historic parks, but neither WTOP nor DC News Now reports a distance.
Republican Dave Beckwith puts numbers on it. The retired Air Force colonel, who won the GOP primary with 72.7% of the vote, told InsideNoVa the biggest mistake was “not having a setback like half a mile or two miles from residential communities.” He did not commit to a distance. His plan is federal minimum guidelines that local governments could put to work.
Beckwith adds up the congressman’s time as a delegate, a state senator and a congressman, “almost seven years,” and says he “failed to address the growth of data centers and the placement of data centers.”
In the Committee’s view, here is the gap. Suhas Subramanyam is promising a method, a standard and a strategy, written by a federal department. Dave Beckwith is pointing at distances a homeowner can measure, half a mile or two miles, though he has not committed to one. A method can be studied for years. A setback line either exists or it does not.
And Subramanyam knows exactly what the sites do to his neighbors. He told DC News Now “we’re putting them next to homes and communities.” He even said he would support a state moratorium. A state moratorium would have to come from the General Assembly, where the Democrat majorities just kept the tax break.
Beckwith keeps bringing it up. Asked what he would do, he said his message to both parties is “Don’t count on my vote for a shutdown because you’re not going to get it.” Solving problems “on the back of our federal workers and our military,” he said, is not an option.
The record on the other side is short. On Sept. 19, 2025, Subramanyam voted against the House Republican funding bill. It passed anyway, 217–212. The government shut down on Oct. 1. It stayed shut for 43 days, with roughly 900,000 federal employees furloughed.
Who are those employees? Subramanyam has said it himself: his district has “tens of thousands of federal workers and contractors.” Those are the voters Beckwith says he will not put through it again.
Virginia’s 10th District covers all of Loudoun, part of western Prince William, and portions of southern Fairfax County. Subramanyam won it in 2024 with just over 52%. Democrats who run Richmond kept the tax break, in a deal Republicans took part in. He says “we” put too many data centers here. Now he wants Trump’s departments to sort it out. On Nov. 3, the voters of the 10th decide whether “we” still includes Suhas Subramanyam.