Data centers tighten county executive battle in Frederick

With just days left in the campaign, Frederick County Executive Jessica Fitzwater (D) finds herself in an unlikely dogfight with an underfunded GOP challenger who is now the subject of attack ads produced by a super PAC.

Voter anger over data centers may, at least in part, be responsible.

“Without the data center issue, she would be cruising to an easy, guaranteed, no-doubt-about-it reelection,” said Kai Hagen, a Democrat and former Frederick County Councilmember who lost to Fitzwater in the 2022 primary.

Just across the Potomac from Loudoun County, Virginia — which hosts one of the largest concentrations of hyperscale data centers in the world — Frederick County’s Adamstown is Maryland’s ground zero for data center development.

Of late, it’s been a rocky road. There’s been outcry from residents, who sought to bring data center zoning onto the ballot, but who saw a 20,000-signature petition quashed by Maryland’s highest court.

Fitzwater says she’s listening. She imposed a pause on new data centers and, after initially singing its praises, she rejected a September deal that would have granted data center developers new rights in the county in exchange for $110 million for school renovations, a community center and a new fire truck.

But her reversal brought the county’s data center quandary back to the courts, this time with data center campus developer Catellus crying foul.

Had the issue been handled differently, Hagen said, Fitzwater likely would not be in so tight a race.

“Clearly, the issue has made a difference,” he said.

So much so that Republican nominee Jeff Holtzinger, who served one term as Frederick mayor nearly two decades ago, is making an unlikely run despite an array of political disadvantages.

He’s running in a year when Democrats are predicting a “blue wave” over voter disapproval of President Donald Trump (R), in a county where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 11,500 voters. On campaign funding, he’s been outraised by Fitzwater 32-1, and outspent by nearly 40-1.

Mike Hough, a Republican former state senator who lost the 2022 executive’s race to Fitzwater by less than 1,000 votes, said the Fitzwater-Holzinger contest is one that “we shouldn’t be talking about.”

“I don’t think Jeff has hardly any money, so on paper it shouldn’t be a race…. I think the data centers are part of the issue for sure,” Hough said.

Hough also thinks Fitzwater, whom he describes as “very aggressively pro-growth,” is hurt by the fact that “data centers … fit part and parcel with the growth that people don’t like” in Frederick County.

A recent poll by the Institute for Politics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County found nearly 8 in 10 Maryland voters opposed the construction of data centers: 83% of Democrats, 91% of unaffiliated voters and 55% of Republicans.

In Frederick, a county of roughly 210,000 people, 39% are registered Democrats, about a third are Republicans and 28% are unaffiliated voters, up 3 percentage points from four years ago, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections.

The data center issue seemingly reared its head in the June primary, when County Council President Brad Young, a Democrat, lost his seat, while candidates preaching “data center sanity” largely won out. It came after the council, with Fitzwater’s support, expanded an existing zone for data centers near Adamstown, but barred them from elsewhere in the county.

Then came United Frederick, a super PAC that has so far reported pumping more than $400,000 into Fitzwater’s race. The group’s ads target Holtzinger, linking him to the Make America Great Again movement and President Donald Trump (R), as well as ICE and unpopular immigration enforcement activities.

The group’s funding, about $550,000, comes from Maryland State Education Association, AFSCME and Total Wine and Food Supply, a company co-founded by former Rep. David Trone, a Democrat.

The race has attracted other outside attention. Gov. Wes Moore (D) stopped in Frederick to rally with Democrats including Fitzwater during a barnstorming tour of Western Maryland. On Friday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-8th) and April McClain Delaney (D-6th) will make campaign stops in the county.

Fitzwater, a former music teacher, who first entered politics 12 years ago as a county council member, says she’s feeling optimistic.

During canvassing efforts focused largely on Democrats and the county’s growing number of unaffiliated voters, she said she does not hear about data centers terribly often.

“People are not asking me about this at the doors. They’re talking about ICE. They’re talking about affordability,” Fitzwater said. “They want to vote against Trump. It’s not the first thing that is on people’s minds.”

Knocking on doors in a Frederick suburb on a recent sunny afternoon, Fitzwater led with her experience as a teacher, and the fact that she’s a mom with two children enrolled in the county public school system. She argued she would continue to bolster investment in Frederick schools. But she also pitched herself as an “antidote to what we’re seeing in Washington.”

The responses to data centers may change depending on which door is knocked and who answers.

In rural places along the county’s southwestern border with Virginia, such as Adamstown, Jefferson and Middletown, the issue hits close to home, said Frank Hollewa, a Republican candidate for Frederick County Council.

“It’s probably the issue in certain sections of the county, like in Jefferson and Middletown, and here in Point of Rocks and Adamstown,” Hollewa said. “Yeah, it is a huge issue, but you know maybe somewhere else they might think naively: ‘That’s their problem.’ But like I said, the tentacles — this is far-reaching.”

When data centers do come up, Fitzwater said the concerns she hears while canvassing are often national in scope.

“It’s not usually about some specific thing the county has or hasn’t done,” Fitzwater said. “It’s more of an overarching concern about data centers, AI, what’s going to happen — not wanting to see them kind of taking over.”

Still, Fitzwater admits that data centers have “shifted the temperature” of the race — and her last year or so as county executive.

What began as a data center campus on a polluted brownfield — a shuttered aluminum smelting facility — expanded to 2,600 acres in late 2025, when the council approved zoning changes, roping in former agricultural land. But the county also banned data centers in all other industrial areas for the first time.

“There really was an effort to represent that action as an expansion of data centers, which it just wasn’t,” Fitzwater said. “What it did was actually restrict where data centers can go.

“We heard very loudly and clearly from folks they didn’t want to see data center sprawl — pockets of it all over the county,” Fitzwater said.

She worries some of her constituents have become lost in a national anti-data center furor, and caught up in the potential negative side effects of data center proposals in other states. She believes the solution lies in educating voters about the county’s efforts to centralize — and police — the hyperscalers.

“One of my challenges has been: How do you communicate that, while also recognizing these larger concerns and fears that people have that are well beyond anything that’s happening here?” Fitzwater said.

She’s committed to working with the next county council to reduce the zoning expansion approved in 2025.

Thomas Slater, a Frederick attorney and longtime Democratic activist, argues that Fitzwater’s recent reversals, including on the zoning decision and the $110 million agreement, will work in her favor.

“My assessment is that she has turned it around, and is likely to win because of the fact that she is trying to distance herself from being considered pro-data center — and the weakness of her opponent,” Slater said.

But he acknowledges some voters could see it as flip-flopping.

“Some people think they don’t trust her, because it seems obvious that she is reversing what seems to be her position. But other people say she’s reading the public and reacting to the voters,” Slater said.

It wasn’t data centers that drew Holtzinger to reenter the political fray to oppose Fitzwater, but rising property taxes and poorly planned growth.

True to his civil engineering background — which helped him defeat local political heavyweight Ron Young for mayor in 2005, following a water crisis — Holtzinger said he’s concerned that the county lacks the water resources to feed the data centers, and that local roads are ill prepared for associated truck traffic.

He argues that the county has so far bungled its handling of the hyperscale developers interested in Frederick, spurring a potentially costly lawsuit from data center developer Catellus, filed earlier this month.

“The secrecy, the flip-flopping,” Holtzinger said. “Her political maneuvering has put the entire county in a very difficult position.”

Holtzinger is quick to criticize the effort to brand him as a MAGA Republican and tie him to an unpopular president.

“They’re trying to deflect to national politics and identity politics,” Holtzinger said in response. “It’s disingenuous and it’s lazy.”

Holtzinger said he, like outspoken Frederick Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, a Republican, supports 287(g) agreements, which up until this year let local law enforcement transfer detainees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that it kept immigrant detention in controlled environments rather than out on the streets. But as county executive, he said he wouldn’t focus on that issue — or other national talking points.

“I have no control over ICE. My focus is going to be on core local government issues, things that people rely on every day to go about their lives,” Holtzinger said.

He draws a sharp contrast to Fitzwater on school funding, arguing that the school system has been spending wastefully, and must be scrutinized more closely.

“I strongly believe in a strong public education system,” he said. “But there has to be accountability.”

The United Frederick ads also argue that Holtzinger is hiding his true record on data centers, pointing in particular to one comment he gave the Frederick News-Post: “I am not against data centers.”

One election flyer “leads people to believe that I — along with Donald Trump and Elon Musk — turbo-charged the development of hyperscale data centers,” Holtzinger said. “That’s ridiculous.”

“You would think I’m the county executive and I’m the one making all the bad decisions. I’m not in office. She is,” Holtzinger said.

Nevertheless, Holtzinger’s message on data centers has seemingly resonated with voters of varying political stripes in and around Adamstown, where data center construction continues unabated even amid a temporary moratorium on new proposals.

“The average Frederick County voter will go: ‘Isn’t it great? She’s doing a moratorium,’” said Adamstown resident Elyse Wilson, an independent voter who supports Holzinger. “People think a moratorium is stopping.”

Numerous large warehouses already appear amid a sprawling construction site, attracting concerns about polluting dust, contaminated groundwater and eventual air toxins from diesel generator use. And on Oct. 14, the county’s planning commission approved three new data centers on a parcel to which a developer already had development rights.

Some say they’ve lost faith in Fitzwater, and a change is needed.

That includes Adamstown resident Hope Green, whose front yard once overlooked farm fields but now sits face-to-face with one of several data center warehouses — hardly blocked by a smattering of recently planted trees.

“Everything’s been destroyed here. Our environment, our health and wellbeing. They’ve just decimated it,” Green said.