DAVID MARCUS: West Virginian fairgoers are worried, but not about prices

Since the 1950s, the Jefferson County Fair in West Virginia has been serving up prize pigs, hefty heifers and fried everything for a citizenry that still adores it. 

As politicians have long known, it is among the best places on Earth to take the temperature of the American voter.

Over the two days, while stuffing the old Marcus face with corn dogs and pepperoni rolls, I had expected the political talk to be about prices, or affordability, as the Democratic Socialists and the mainstream media call it. But what most people wanted to talk about was data centers.

"Im a farmer," Roy, who raises cattle nearby, told me. "Data centers, power lines, all of that, it's a threat to us. All we've got is the land."

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This is a sentiment I heard, not just from the regular folks of Jefferson County, but from those who seek to serve them.

Jenny Thacker and Marta Beck are both Democrats running for the House of Delegates. While they arent completely opposed to data centers in the county, both have issues with how the developments are being implemented.

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"We cannot afford to have water taken out of our system. So, if we can make a law that says, 'Yes, you can use surface water, but you cannot use well water,' that goes a long way to protecting our groundwater," Thacker said.

For Becks part, her concern was that "they [the state] have taken away local control from the municipalities." That word, "control," really lies at the heart of this debate, not just in West Virginia, but everywhere I travel in the country.

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Also at the fair was Tamara Thompson, vice president of We The People of Jefferson County, one of the original Tea Party groups still exerting power in the Mountaineer State. She said she has been getting an earful about data centers.

"I hear a lot of people being against it [data centers]," Thompson said, noting that many complain of noise pollution. "I like boots on the ground, so going there and hearing whether or not there is an export of extreme sounds was something I took personal, and I didnt experience that."

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One fairgoer, Sarah, a retired teacher, put it rather succinctly.

"I guess we need em," she quipped holding up her phone, "but nobody wants em."

What became clear, through Tuesdays demolition derby and Wednesdays antique tractor pull, is that data centers are a real issue, but also the Platonic form of a first-world problem.

KEVIN O'LEARY WARNS CHIN

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