Zimmerman’s Artificial Behavior
This letter to the editor, by Paul Hambleton, appeared in the Hudson Star Observer on September 3, 2026.
Editor’s note: Paul Hambleton is the chair of the St. Croix County Democrats.
Shannon Zimmerman wants the voters of Assembly District 30 to believe he’s a shield against the data centers now eyeing western Wisconsin. Really?
Zimmerman is no bystander to the artificial intelligence boom driving data center construction. He’s an executive in the artificial intelligence industry, and he sits on the Legislature’s AI task force as well as the Joint Finance Committee that shapes the state budget.
In 2023, he authored Assembly Bill 302, and the data center tax break it proposed was folded into the 2023-25 state budget. Zimmerman handed tax breaks to the very industry whose sprawling, power-hungry data centers now threaten to raise our electric bills. That exemption from sales tax has been estimated to cost Wisconsin about $2 billion in revenue, dollars that might have gone toward public schools or shared revenue to hold down local property taxes.
As concerns about data centers grew, he wrote another bill, 2025’s Assembly Bill 840, and started selling himself as our protector. Here’s the catch: it drew fire from every direction. Ratepayer advocates and Democrats said it would not actually protect ratepayers. Construction and utility unions opposed it for lacking wage protections. Environmental groups said it undercut clean energy and threatened water quality. Even the data center industry objected. The bill passed the Assembly on a near-party-line 53-44 vote, then died in the Senate.
The pattern is clear: Zimmerman promotes the industry, draws his paycheck from it, then poses as its opponent once bipartisan opposition mounted.
You have a choice on Nov. 3. Assembly District 30 deserves a representative like Kevin Knoke who works for us, not the AI industry. Don’t be fooled by Zimmerman’s pivot. He welcomed AI and data centers, profited from them, and now pretends to be the savior.
