While local activists see Board Chair Ann Wheeler’s loss to Deshundra Jefferson in last week’s primary as a clear rebuke of the proliferation of data centers in western Prince William, supervisors are divided on the voters’ message.

Wheeler, 61, who was vying for a second term, raised at least five times as much as Jefferson, 47, a political newcomer. Wheeler’s campaign coffers were largely fueled by data center interests, such as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which supports the data center industry because of the jobs it creates for its electrician members.

“You know when you hope and pray, but you don’t think something could really happen? That’s how I felt [when Jefferson won],” said Elena Schlossberg, executive director of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County, a group that advocates for the preservation of the county’s rural crescent. The group led a failed attempt to recall Wheeler from office over her support for the Prince William Digital Gateway, which would allow a massive data center corridor on about 1,600 rural acres adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park.

“I was looking up to the universe, saying ‘we really need this one,’ and the universe delivered,” Schlossberg said.

Schlossberg has been an outspoken opponent of the PW Digital Gateway as well as the Devlin Technology Park, a controversial data center development proposed for 270 acres next to homes and Chris Yung Elementary School in Bristow, largely for environmental and quality of life issues.

Schlossberg says Wheeler’s loss was due to her support of what she calls “the worst kind of planning imaginable”: building data centers near homes and schools despite residents’ objections as well as the county’s overreliance on data centers instead of a variety of commercial development.

“I hope that other supervisors stop following her losing strategy,” Schlossberg said. “People didn’t like what she was doing to their communities.”

Residents call for a moratorium on data centers

Schlossberg was one of about a dozen local activists who came to the Tuesday, June 27 board of supervisors’ meeting to voice their support for Jefferson’s and Supervisor Jeanine Lawson’s primary wins and to ask the board to put the brakes on new data center developments.

Lawson, 53, won the GOP nomination to run for board chair over Kenn Knarr, 60, by nearly 63 points. Knarr, a retired Marine and former schoolteacher turned defense contractor, owns a home and land in the PW Digital Gateway planning area that’s under contract to sell to Compass Datacenters.

“If you add up (Jefferson’s and Lawson’s) votes, there is a 24.8% difference between them for (pro) data center versus the limited data center candidates,” John Lyver, a Heritage Hunt resident and retired NASA analyst said during the June 27 board meeting. “Ten points is considered a mandate; five points is considered significant. So, a 25-point difference? The people have spoken.”

“I’m asking for this board to put a pause on data center development until the new board takes office in January and to be transparent and disclose the locations and numbers of current data center projects that are already approved and being constructed in Prince William County,” Rachel Ellis, a Gainesville resident, said during the June 27 board meeting. “I’m asking this board to restore trust and listen to the hundreds of voices that have spoken against the Digital Gateway and Devlin Technology Park. People in Prince William are awake, and we are engaged.”

Though many speakers at the board meeting attributed Jefferson’s win to the data center issue, most of them live in the western part of the county where data centers have had a heavy impact. Jefferson appears to have won in precincts across the county, even in eastern Prince William, where data centers were not a top-of-mind issue for primary voters.

Wheeler’s, Boddye’s reactions

Some of Wheeler’s colleagues on the board of supervisors are divided on whether her loss was about data centers. Supervisor Kenny Boddye, D-Occoquan, who has been a swing vote on data center projects in the past, said he was surprised when Jefferson won.

“Ann Wheeler had raised a lot more money than Deshundra. She had more campaign staff and organization,” Boddye said. “Deshundra Jefferson did have a lot of grassroots support and volunteers, but Ann did have a lot more money to communicate; she had a lot more of a traditional campaign structure.”

Boddye said that he thinks Jefferson was elected for two main reasons.

“I think it speaks to the support on the Democratic side to elect candidates of color; she is poised to be the first Black and Black woman chair,” Boddye said of Jefferson. “And I think it does speak to the need to take a look at how we are working with the data center industry to site data centers, and how their impacts affect communities.”

While Wheeler has voted in favor of controversial data center projects such as the PW Digital Gateway, Jefferson has voiced her opposition to the project because of nearby historic sites and the possible effects on the watershed of the Occoquan Reservoir, which provides drinking water to much of eastern Northern Virginia.

Wheeler declined to comment on whether she will attempt to bring the PW Digital Gateway, Devlin and John Marshall Technology Park, proposed for Va. 55 near Tyler Elementary School, to a vote before the new board is elected.

“To attribute Tuesday’s outcome only to data centers is to not fully understand the intricacies of the changes that have occurred in Prince William County over the last three and a half years,” Wheeler said in a statement she released after she conceded defeat. “There has been a shift in the balance of power, with many new people finally having a seat at the table.”

Like Wheeler, some members of the Board of Supervisors believe that the reasons for Jefferson’s election were more complex.

“If (data centers) were the only issue, we’re going to be in for a real reckoning, because the county is so much more than just data centers,” said Supervisor Victor Angry, D-Neabsco, a chief proponent of the PW Digital Gateway.

On primary election day, however, Angry said the election opened his eyes to issues with data centers and that he is willing to have more conversations with constituents about them.

“One thing I have learned, through a lot of discussion, is that the issue with data centers is getting them away from residences and schools,” Angry said.

Supervisor Bob Weir, R-Gainesville, who attributed his win in a February special election to anger over a proliferation of data centers, said noted Jefferson won in the eastern part of the county, where few large data center projects are on the table, aside from the Potomac Technology Park, which would site a data center complex at the head of Prince William Forest Park.

 

Jefferson: Suggestions she won because she’s Black are ‘extraordinarily racist’

Jefferson herself says she does not want to be seen as just an anti-data-center candidate, and she attributes her win to a variety of “kitchen-table” issues that affect people throughout the county.

“The county is at a crossroads; they’re looking for someone to lead them forward,” Jefferson said in an interview Tuesday. “It’s not just data centers; it’s land use in general. There are precincts I won in the east that don’t have the impact of data centers, but there are other things they’re worried about—cost of living, safety. I feel like those things combined helped propel me to victory.”

Jefferson also called the idea that she won because voters want to see the county elect its first Black county board chair “extraordinarily racist.”

“Because they’re basically saying that all the doors I knocked on didn’t make a difference,” Jefferson said. “Obviously the people who are saying this don’t believe in diversity; they don’t believe that Black people can accomplish great things.”

Bill Wright, of Gainesville, has been active in the fight against the PW Digital Gateway since the fall of 2021 because he objects to a major data center hub, now projected to be between 28 and 34 buildings, next to the Manassas National Battlefield and Heritage Hunt, the over-55 community where he has lives.

‘Stunned disbelief’ over Jefferson’s upset across the county

Wright, a Democrat, said he met with Wheeler in late 2021 to encourage her not to open the rural crescent to data centers or allow them to close to homes and schools. When that didn’t work – and after it came to light that Wheeler and her husband had tens of thousands invested in companies tied to data centers – Wright got involved in the effort to recall Wheeler from office.

Then, after Jefferson, a fellow PW Digital Gateway opponent, announced her candidacy in January 2023, Wright was an early supporter and volunteered to be her campaign treasurer.

In an interview last week, Wright said the campaign was mostly a grassroots effort. Jefferson did not have a campaign manager but instead relied on Wright and others involved in the Wheeler recall effort, or those upset about data centers proposed near their homes, to encourage their friends and neighbors to vote for Jefferson.

A few dozen like-minded residents hand wrote postcards for Jefferson and were involved in what Wright called a “daisy-chain-email” strategy to get the word out about Jefferson’s campaign. Together, they cobbled together enough money to pay for three targeted mailers in support of Jefferson. Still, Jefferson raised less than $70,000 for her campaign and was outspent by Wheeler by at least five to one.

That’s why Wright said he and Jefferson reacted with “stunned disbelief” when it became clear late on primary election night that Jefferson had unseated Wheeler.

“I mean, we knew we knew that we had a chance. … But we really didn’t think we were gonna win,” Wright said. “And when we actually won, it was like, we just really couldn’t get our heads around it. It took a day to sink in.”

Wright said the energy behind Jefferson’s campaign came mostly from western Prince William residents who were upset about several controversial data center projects, including the PW Digital Gateway, the Devlin Technology Park, the John Marshall Technology Park and the new “Village Technology Park,” which was approved in 2021 but just began construction last fall. A few weeks before the election, residents watched as huge, 70-foot data center walls popped just yards away from the townhomes at Village Place, off Va. 55 in Gainesville.

“What I think had a significant impact in this outcome of this election is what I call the angry HOAs, the people that were really being sold down the river by this data center development,” Wright said. “They had a higher turnout. They were energized. They were probably the early voters.”

More than 14,000 votes – about 35% of the 39,285 ballots in both the Republican and Democratic primaries for board chair – were cast during the weeks of early voting. Those votes have not yet been assigned back to their precincts, so it’s not yet possible to know where Jefferson received her strongest base of support.

For eastern Prince William residents, the push to elect Jefferson was not so much about data centers as it was about a more general feeling that county leaders are more responsive to deep-pocketed developers than they are to residents’ concerns, Wright said.

“You know, taking back the county for the people and away from the fat-cat donors who have been running it too long,” he explained. “It wasn’t necessarily data centers. It’s that the elected officials are not working for the people.”

“Even if they didn’t know … the data centers were paving over certain areas; they knew that despite all this data center hype, they weren’t seeing their taxes go down,” he said.

“It wasn’t just data centers, per se,” he added. “It’s the fact that the government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the big tech industry, and they are more beholden to those folks than they are to us.”

Jill Palermo contributed to this report. Reach the writers at news@fauquier.com