OPINION: The Hill: A New Deal for the Age of AI: How Democrats can hold Big Tech accountable

By Sacha Haworth, Founder and CEO of The Tech Oversight Project

In 2018, House Democrats won 41 seats by hammering the message that Republicans, led by an unpopular president, gave sweetheart tax deals to a corrupt industry that hurt regular people. That year’s villain was the health insurance industry. This year’s was Big Tech — the first-ever election in which tech issues became a centerpiece of campaign ads.

The worst thing Democrats could do now is return to business as usual in Washington, just as voters handed them a tech accountability mandate. It would betray our campaign promises, fail to meet the moment, and create resentment in the electorate that will cost us in 2028.

Our mass condemnation of the tech industry has been swift. From 2020 to 2024, Democrats and allies ran just two ads that mentioned Big Tech. This year, more than 130 federal and statewide races ran on it, including 74 percent of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Red to Blue races, 86 percent of Senate toss-ups and 100 percent of gubernatorial toss-up races.

According to some estimates, data centers were a core message of more than $170 million in ads. Candidates called for pauses on data centers, warned of AI’s dangers, and tied their Republican opponents to the industry in terms that previously would have been considered extreme. According to an SSRS exit poll, 56 percent of voters said that AI and data centers were crucial or a major factor affecting their vote.

Think about it: voters have watched tech giants write seven-figure checks to President Trump’s inauguration and political machine. Trump’s administration dropped federal investigations into the tech industry after it became the majority funder of the ballroom that Trump is building illegally adjacent to the White House. Big Tech got the tax breaks it long wanted, while millions of Americans saw their health care benefits slashed to pay for it while their energy bills skyrocketed.

Trump even insulted working-class and rural data center opponents and branded AI skeptics “THE ENEMY!”

No wonder, then, that in January, six in 10 voters told us the industry had too much influence in Washington, and by a two to one ratio believed the Trump administration was too cozy with Big Tech.

Meanwhile, Democrats’ advantage on handling AI’s impact grew from 8 points this summer to 12 in September; Americans now trust Democrats more than Republicans on the most important issues to voters (health care and cost of living). AI and technology concerns shot up as well: Data scientist David Shor found AI rose in importance more in a single week this fall than in the entire previous year.

Tech is now central to affordability, as data centers drive up power bills and Big Tech companies use their market dominance to charge us more than our neighbors for the same products. It’s key for jobs and the economy, as chatbots and AI agents take over some work and transform the rest. It’s a rural issue and an environmental one, as these companies gobble up farmland for data centers, drain aquifers to cool them, and fire up new fossil fuel plants. And while all this happens, a handful of tech billionaires just keep getting richer on the backs of the people whose lives they are upending.

So here’s the strategy for Democrats over the next two years: govern like we campaigned.

Use the gavel to rein in the AI industry, expose Big Tech, force Republicans to choose between voters and their donors, and bring Big Tech’s CEOs before Congress and make them answer for their dangerous products and corrupt data center deals. Most importantly, build an agenda big enough to carry into 2028.

Let’s use our tech accountability mandate to pass a comprehensive social media, data privacy and AI safety bill that holds these companies responsible, bury the industry’s scheme to ban state AI laws, and write into law that Big Tech, not families, pays for its data centers. Make the companies profiting from AI pay their share, and use that money to rebuild what a decade of neglect and months of Elon Musk’s DOGE decimated.

Make sure the workers whose jobs AI is upending share in the wealth it creates, and generate new jobs with new public works projects. Harness AI for the public good — a technology sector that answers to citizens, not just shareholders. Then, make the industry that strained the grid help pay for the clean energy future.

Our party’s tech accountability mandate is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to show the American people that we can think big, be bold, and use the potential of AI to deliver a New Deal for the 21st century.

If we can make Big Tech answer to the public and ensure this technology serves all Americans, not just the billionaires who own it, we won’t just earn a coalition big enough to win the White House in 2028. We’ll have a movement built to last, a roadmap for unlocking our potential, and a future where our country is reaching for its highest heights.

Sacha Haworth is founder and CEO of the Tech Oversight Project. She is a veteran of Democratic campaigns all over the country, working for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Majority PAC, and on Capitol Hill.