Opinion | Janet Mills makes the right call on data centers

The veto removes a near-term regulatory overhang for the data-center buildout chain and reduces the odds of a copycat moratorium spreading through other politically motivated, high-power-cost jurisdictions. The first-order beneficiaries are not the hyperscalers so much as the infrastructure toll-takers: utilities with interconnection capacity, grid equipment vendors, cooling, switchgear, and select REITs that monetize incremental load. More importantly, the decision signals that local governments may be less willing to sacrifice AI-related capex, which keeps the “permissioning risk” discount from widening further across the sector.

The second-order effect is on power availability rather than construction headlines. Data centers are increasingly competing with industrial electrification, crypto-like load growth, and defense-adjacent infrastructure for scarce transmission and generation slots; anything that preserves expected demand should support longer-duration capital allocation into gas peakers, nuclear life extensions, batteries, and transmission. If the political tone improves even marginally, the market may need to reprice the probability of more aggressive state-level restrictions from a months-long threat into a lower-probability, two- to three-year policy risk.

The contrarian read is that the market may be overestimating how much one veto changes the national policy path. The real constraint remains grid capacity, not headline legality, so the winners are those able to deliver megawatts fastest, not those merely exposed to AI capex. A reversal would likely come only if power prices spike or local reliability events become visible; that would revive the anti-data-center narrative quickly and hit the entire AI infrastructure complex.

For portfolios, this is a modest positive for the “picks-and-shovels” trade rather than a clean directional call on the biggest AI beneficiaries. The best risk/reward is likely in names tied to electricity bottlenecks and equipment lead times, where incremental policy clarity can expand order visibility without needing an earnings beat. Timing matters: expect the strongest reaction over days, while the fundamental impact plays out over quarters as permitting decisions and utility capex plans get revised.