WASHINGTON, DC – As last Tuesday’s election results confirm, Big Tech accountability is a marquee issue for winning Democratic political campaigns across the country. The Tech Oversight Project is releasing four memos offering case studies of how Big Tech accountability played as a powerful issue in four key races:
- Taking on Big Tech in the 2025 NJ Governor’s Race: Mikie Sherrill
- Taking on Big Tech in the 2025 VA Governor’s Race: Abigail Spanberger
- Taking on Big Tech in the 2025 NYC Mayoral Race: Zohran Mamdani
- Taking on Big Tech in the 2025 PA Supreme Court Retention Election
“From southern Virginia up to New York City, 2025’s elections proved that Big Tech accountability offers Democratic candidates a cudgel against MAGA Republicans and their Big Tech CEO enablers that resonates with people across the country and that is squarely couched in Democratic Party values,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project. “Tuesday confirmed that taking on Big Tech needs to be a core to Democratic messaging moving forward – especially as industry super PACs have declared war on our elections.”
The four memos highlight key moments and messages that played to Democrats’ advantage in last week’s elections, which linked Big Tech abuses and corruption associated with the MAGA/Big Tech CEO alliance with core concerns about affordability and kids’ safety. New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill made kids’ online safety and tackling data-center-driven energy prices central to her campaign; Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger highlighted her plan to make sure data centers pay their “fair share”; New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani called out unpopular A.I.-driven dynamic pricing; and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court retention race showed Democrats capitalizing on the unpopularity of Big Tech oligarchs and their demand for data centers at local communities’ expense.
In the closing beats of the campaigns, former president Barack Obama hit the campaign trail and applauded Democratic gubernatorial candidates’ leadership in taking on Big Tech. Obama directly took on Big Tech “megabillionaires” who “control what we see and what we hear” at a Virginia Spanberger rally: “I worry about the growing concentration of economic power in this country, with just a handful of mega billionaires and companies controlling what we see and what we hear, and I worry about how much that economic power distorts the political process.”
With data centers, online safety, and consumer protection emerging as winning issues from the Virginia exurbs to the New Jersey suburbs to New York City, Democrats have a roadmap for taking on Big Tech in 2026 midterm campaigns.
