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One day after voters unleashed a ballot-box thunderstorm that washed away four incumbent Republican senators, Brian Wrightson made it clear that data center disgust helped shape his victory over one of them.
"I believe that data centers played as the biggest issue in northeastern Pennsylvania," said Wrightson, a Democrat and IT worker for 40 years who defeated longtime Republican lawmaker Sen. Rosemary Brown of Monroe County. Wrightson didn't pull punches when asked his position.
"My preference would be that I never saw a data center in Pennsylvania," Wrightson said in an interview.
He was in the middle of Democrats' Election Day flip of the Senate, which Republicans had held by a 27-23 count going in but were on the short end of a 26-24 count coming out.
That, combined with Democrats' expansion of their majority in the House and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro's drubbing of Republican challenger Stacy Garrity, means Wrightson's party will be in full control when the Legislature gets back to business in January.
Two other Democrats who beat sitting Republican senators -- Mark Pinsley and Eileen Hartnett Albillar -- said data center worries were among the top issues as they won in their districts.
Shapiro said Wednesday afternoon that he had "a mandate" to continue leading the state. With all three legs of the governing system nailed down, Shapiro said Democratic leaders would quickly act to raise the minimum wage, fund mass transit, boost housing, ensure reproductive freedom for women, and bolster the ability of child sex abuse victims to confront abusers in court.
"We have the responsibility to do this work and we are excited to get going," Shapiro said.
Democratic Sen. Jay Costa of Allegheny County is expected to become Senate president pro tempore when the new two-year legislative begins. Costa said on Wednesday that Republicans who controlled the Senate failed to act on more than 200 bills that had been passed by the Democratic-controlled House in the past two years.
Of Shapiro, Costa said the Democratic-controlled Senate would "be his partner going forward."
Calls of House races by the Associated Press showed Democrats with 111 seats and Republicans with 88, with four races still to be decided. Going into Tuesday, Democrats held a 103-100 advantage.
In the Senate, the four races in which Republican incumbents lost were:
-- In Senate District 16 in Lehigh and Bucks counties, challenger Pinsley, the Lehigh County controller, defeated Republican incumbent Sen. Jarrett Coleman. Unofficial results showed Pinsley with 63,302 votes and Coleman with 60,201.
-- Wrightson was declared the victor in Senate District 40, which includes Monroe County and parts of Lackawanna and Wayne counties. Unofficial results showed he defeated incumbent Sen. Rosemary Brown, 50,072 to 47,283.
-- In Senate District 6 covering part of Bucks County, Democratic challenger Albillar defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Frank Farry by an unofficial count of 61,771 to 59,146.
-- In Senate District 24 covering parts of Berks and Montgomery counties, Democratic challenger Chris Thomas defeated Republican incumbent Tracy Pennycuick and Green Party candidate Mike Schonewolf. Unofficial counts on the Department of State website Wednesday afternoon showed Thomas with 62,995 votes; Pennycuick, 50,843, and Schonewolf, 2,129.
Another Senate incumbent who lost was a Democrat: Sen. James Malone of Lancaster County. Malone had won a special election in early 2025 in the heavily Republican 36th Senate District, but on Tuesday he lost to Republican challenger Rep. Tom Jones. Unofficial results Wednesday afternoon showed Jones with 65,126 votes and Malone with 54,184.
The election results in Pennsylvania burnished Shapiro's credentials as a heavyweight in national Democratic politics. The governor campaigned for state- and nation-level Democrats in recent weeks while running up a 60% to 38% win over Garrity.
Shapiro said he recruited four Democratic Pennsylvania congressional candidates who won their races on Tuesday. He spoke about Tuesday conversations he had with both U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrats in the Senate and House, respectively.
Data centers got little mention, if at all, in the Shapiro-led press conference held by victorious Pennsylvania Democrats on Wednesday. Albillar, however, said in an interview that concerns about them were one of the top three issues in the just-completed campaign.
The main issue, she said, was people being at "the economic breaking point" because of rising costs. But it was clear during the campaign that people were "very apprehensive" about data centers.
"We need to pause approvals of the data centers until we have had ample time to get feedback from the communities," she said.
Pinsley said in an interview that the unpopularity of data centers was a "massive" factor in his defeat of Coleman.
The general "political environment" was the main context, Pinsley said, with voters in his district concerned enough about the costs of gas, groceries, electricity, and other necessities to produce a "backlash" against President Trump.
The burst of data center proposals, Pinsley said, not only raised the issue of big, noisy, environmentally questionable new buildings, but related concerns about artificial intelligence.
"People are just very worried," Pinsley said.