Voters in Independence, Missouri, on Tuesday night voted to recall a city council member who has served for over a decade, rebuking his decision in March to back billions of dollars in tax breaks for a proposed artificial intelligence data center.The recall effort comes amid escalating backlash nationwide against the rapid proliferation of data centers that is influencing federal and local races ahead of November’s midterm elections.Independence City Councilmember John Perkins was recalled on Tuesday, with nearly 70 percent of his city council district voting to remove him from the council, according to unofficial election results from Jackson County.
The anger in Independence, a Kansas City suburb with 121,000 residents, over the construction of a data center on the city’s eastern flank has been mounting for months.In March, Perkins was one of five council members who voted to issue tax breaks totaling more than $6 billion to the Dutch company Nebius for the construction of the planned $150 billion AI data center.Over 50 community members attended and spoke at the city council meeting where the tax breaks were approved.
A local chapter of the progressive Sunrise Movement organized a letter-writing campaign ahead of the meeting for community members to oppose the tax breaks in an attempt to sink the data center project.A Facebook group for Independence residents who oppose the data center called “Stop the AI Data Center in Independence,” has 115,000 members, many who celebrated on Tuesday night when the unofficial election results showed Perkins had been recalled.“Politicians aren’t entitled to elected positions.They’re elected by the people to serve those people.
When they stop serving the people they were elected to represent, they’re voted out of office,” one member of the group wrote Tuesday.“This is democracy in action.”Another member of the group described speaking to Perkins outside of their polling place on Tuesday, writing that th...