Like the farmer-driven Populist Party more than a century ago, ag secretary candidates are gaining bipartisan support for platforms of empowering the working class and opposing big business interests.
If Clayton Tucker manages to win his long-shot race for Texas Ag Commissioner, it’ll almost certainly be because of data centers.
“I like to joke that we have two big pests coming to Texas,” Tucker, a self-identified economic populist says, “the New World screwworm and AI data centers.”
Today, data centers are one of the biggest political issues in rural America, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Across the map, concerns about public health, climbing energy bills, and a growing sense that the American economic and political systems are only serving the largest corporations and wealthiest citizens are fueling political mobilization across the countryside, catalyzing a movement that defies traditional party lines in a way that we haven’t seen for generations. Many farmers are turning out for this fight.
“For families like mine, and countless farmers and ranchers across the county, this is not theoretical, it’s personal.” said Elizabeth Rogers, a family farmer from Hill County, Texas. She was one of many agrarians who spoke in support of a data center moratorium at a recent county commission hearing. Rogers echoed common worries that the encroachment of data centers, and their use of electricity, water, and other resources, would create a threat that will impact, “whether the land that we pass down to the next generation remains viable.”
Atop this tidal wave of rural energy, a raft of political candidates has materialized to give these and other “unconventional” rural issues a face and a platform. From an Ohio house race to the controversial Maine Senate contest, a cohort of left-wing politicians are running with messages about fighting corrupt billionaires and breaking up corporate monopolies, and they’re gaining traction. But the playbook they’re using is far from new. In fact, it’s more than 100 years old, developed by radical economic populists of yesteryear.
Few embody this modern movement like Clayton Tucker and Iowa’s Chris Jones, both running against Republicans for their state’s top elected agricultural office in the 2026 primaries. Both are, in their own ways, running on platforms of resurrecting rural radical politics, in part by reminding voters that they have the same power—the power of the people—that their populist ancestors held before them.
The Second Coming of the Texan Populists
If you ask Tucker why he decided to run for Texas Ag Commissioner, he’ll tell you plainly. “I was volun-told.”
Tucker is a rancher, who works cattle on the family place in Lampasas, Texas, while serving as secretary of the Texas Farmers Union. It was other Union leaders who first encouraged him to run for the seat that’s been held by Republicans for a generation, but he deferred, preferring his private life on the ranch. He finally succumbed when a mentor, former Texan ag commissioner Jim Hightower, threw a shindig where Tucker was, to his surprise, the guest of honor. Hightower was proud to put his energy behind a small farmer from Lampasas, an identity that is—to lifelong populists like Hightower—like finding a religious leader who’s a carpenter from Bethlehem.
“Grassroots populism began up in Lampasas, back in the 1870s,” Hightower said, explaining the movement’s lore, “for the same reason that people need it now, which is that the moneyed elites—bankers and railroad monopolies—were squeezing productive, efficient, competitive farmers out of business. So farmers got together, organized, rallied, and agitated, and built a movement that stretched all across the country.”
This is one of the origin stories of agrarian populism, one that allied poor farmers with rural workers—like those who built and then worked for the railroads. This alliance was more practical than ideological, as many rural workers got jobs to add to the income stream of a family farm, like when a farmer’s brother or wife heads to town to work to contribute to the mortgage on the family homestead.
The movement these Texan farmers helped build inspired millions of homesteaders to abandon the Republican Party of Lincoln—who signed the Homestead Act in the first place—and instead form what some historians have likened to America’s version of socialism, a left-wing economic populism which organizers aptly dubbed “The People’s Party.” But by Tucker’s reckoning, populism, which he often describes simply as “organized people,” is much older than that.
“The United States was originally a populist experiment. Organized people fighting the organized money of the British Crown.”
“The United States was originally a populist experiment,” Tucker said. “Organized people fighting the organized money of the British Crown.” According to historian Thomas Frank, agrarian populism elevated three signature ideas—equality, hostility to privilege, and anti-monopoly—three ideas that did motivate American revolutionaries, and that are resonating across political divides once again.
When he first started campaigning, Tucker didn’t realize that data centers were going to be the main issue animating voters. He put together a diverse platform that covers a range of agricultural issues, from “making food affordable again” to regulating chemical usage to creating new small farm protections. But even farmers are focused on the fight against data centers. He said his campaign is getting between a dozen and a hundred messages about them every day.
“The water is the hook, right?” he said. “You know, Texas doesn’t have a water management or a conservation plan. We have a ‘managed depletion plan.’ And they’re still building these damn data centers. It makes no sense.” But farmers and ranchers, small towns, and increasingly, urban residents too, are worried not just about sharing a diminishing amount of water with hundreds of proposed new centers—critics have argued the water issue is overstated. It’s also about the noise, vibrations, and heat these facilities emit, about doubling or tripling of their electricity bills due to data center demand, and even about the job losses and societal upheaval related to the burgeoning AI rollout.
And digging a little deeper, it’s clear that the data center concern is not strictly about resources—it’s about power. At town hall and county commission meetings across the state, residents cite concerns about “oversight,” “local zoning rules,” and whether their elected officials actually have the power to ensure that the deep-pocketed, often out-of-state investors behind these developments keep the promises they make. People fear, Tucker said, that their political leaders are being bought and paid for.
“This isn’t red versus blue or city versus country. This is about needing leaders who actually protect people.”
“They’ve been selling us out, on both sides, for years,” Tucker said. “This isn’t red versus blue or city versus country. This is about needing leaders who actually protect people.”
Pissed-off farmers of the late nineteenth century would have completely understood this sentiment. The underlying concerns around data centers—that the economic elite are using their financial gains to rig the economy and the political system in order to seize even more money and resources for themselves—was exactly what fueled agrarian populist movements of the past.
Back then, farmers and workers leveled these same accusations at railroads, Wall Street banks, and the corrupt politicians who represented those interests. Today, data center developers are just one target, but in another agricultural powerhouse a few borders North, it’s a different group of economic elites, one whose stranglehold on state politics is rapidly becoming literal.
Cancer Fuels “Return to Common Sense” in the Land of Prairie Populists
While the data center issue might not feel immediately “life or death,” the one that Iowa faces does. Chris Jones, who’s running to be Iowa’s next Secretary of Agriculture, knows exactly how threatening the issue is—it’s why his adult children have abandoned the state they grew up in.
“My three children, they say, ‘Why would I want to come back there and live? Haven’t you heard about the cancer?’” Jones’ kids are referring to the fact that Iowa has the second highest cancer rate of any U.S. state, and that rate is climbing faster than anywhere else, especially among adults in their 30s and 40s.
Research suggests that Iowa’s biggest farmers may well be the primary source of this problem. In recent decades, industrial-scale producers have turned the state into the pork-producing capital of the country, and with that crown came a ballooning problem with nitrate in drinking water—a result of spreading too much hog manure and other fertilizers onto crop fields, which then washes cancer-causing nitrates into surface and ground water that Iowans drink.
This nitrate issue has grown from an annoying expense for Des Moines Water Works customers into a public health disaster that contributes to higher cancer rates, birth defects, infant deaths, and environmental devastation. In the last two years, Des Moines has been forced to ration water for urban users because they lack enough nitrate-removal capacity to keep up with the heavy loads.
“A lot of farmers, especially smaller farmers, they’re not making money now, and at the same time they get blamed for the pollution.“
Chris Jones knows this story well. He’s a trained chemist, a retired water quality professional, and literally wrote the book on the subject. He wrote it because he felt that it was time for an honest, public conversation about ag’s role in the state’s environmental problems, but even afterwards, he found that many across the state refused to engage. Jones thinks he knows why.
“Big Ag has really intruded into our institutions and controls a lot of the messaging,” he argued. And historically, Iowa’s politicians have been deeply allied with the state’s biggest farmers, often using the bully-pulpit of the ag secretary’s office to advance large-scale agricultural interests. Since the start of Jones’ campaign, however, he says other politicians are starting to speak up. “I think the time is right to talk about this stuff. We need to get some of these hogs out of the CAFOs, and we need to regulate the corn-soy system.”
For decades, this kind of talk would have been totally taboo in Iowa, but Jones’ will not be silenced. He’s not only advocating for moving away from the industrial-scale agriculture that occupies 84% of Iowa’s land, he’s also calling for a retreat from ethanol, for strengthening fertilizer and pesticide regulation, and for dozens of other efforts to rein in the excesses of large-scale agriculture and empower small farmers. Given how divergent his platform is from “status quo” Iowa ag talking points, some have tried to wave Jones away as a fringe radical, but it’s not working. A recent poll found Jones winning 40% support, trailing his Republican competitor, Mike Naig, by just two points.
“Right now,” Jones said, “we have an ag production system that benefits these huge, multinational, ungovernable agribusiness corporations. They call the shots, they control the politics, they make all the donations to candidates. So a retreat from that, I don’t see as radical. What I’m proposing might be described as the conservative approach.”
“A lot of farmers, especially smaller farmers, they’re not making money now, and at the same time they get blamed for the pollution.“
This “return to common sense” thinking is exactly the kind used by the prairie populists, many of them small farmers like those who raged in Texas, who were active in Iowa and across the Midwest for decades around the turn of the twentieth century. Those farmers would find Jones’ call for “a system that works for all Iowans” familiar, which might explain why, time and time again, Jones has found unexpected support on the campaign trail, even in the ag community.
“A lot of farmers, especially smaller farmers, they’re not making money now, and at the same time they get blamed for the pollution. I think they’re ready for something else, even some regulation.”
Jones knows that, while some farmers might support him, Iowa’s biggest farmers won’t. And in reliably conservative Iowa, which has put Republicans in the ag secretary seat continuously for the last two decades, Jones is clear-eyed about his chances. The fact is, he’s even faced resistance from his own party, especially when another candidate joined the primary race. But after securing victory, he says the relationship is changing. “I do think there’s a perception now that I could win, and that I could help bring progressives to the ballot.”
Rural Radical Rise Again
As the relentless march towards November continues, candidates like Jones and Tucker are seizing on the wisdom of America’s agrarian populist past, and finding success. Like Jones, a recent poll by Texas Public Opinion Research found that Tucker is also earning some 40% of support, trailing Republican Nate Sheets by just four percentage points as of late August 2026. Beyond the polls too, Jones and Tucker are creating buzz, earning millions of views online, in the press, and on social media, indicating that their messages are gaining traction.
The wisdom of the populist era that they’ve capitalized on is straightforward. Simple messages are effective, but they can’t just be simple. They also have to focus on the material concerns of ordinary peoples, ones that extend across race, religion, and other identities. “Stop AI data centers” has proved popular in Texas, while “A healthier and more livable Iowa” is working up North. Other issues, from the availability and affordability of local food to the viability of rural hospitals are also part of the conversation—but the urgency of data centers and cancer rates remain the engines of mobilization.
But agrarian populism offers more than just a playbook, it offers hope. “Populism,” historian Thomas Frank writes, “was and is relentlessly optimistic—about people, about political possibilities, about life, and about America in general.” This, I think, is why Jones’ and Tuckers’ campaigns feel so resonant today, not because of the anger or fear that ordinary people feel, but because of the balm of hope that populist messages and strategies offer.
“Populism was and is relentlessly optimistic—about people, about political possibilities, about life, and about America in general.”
After all, rural radicalism of a century ago worked. Not only did farmers and their allies win elections, they succeeded in reshaping American politics. Populists won the first ever banking and railroad regulations, inspired an era of antitrust action that broke up countless monopolies, won for American citizens the right to directly elect their senators, and even set up state-owned industries (like banks, power utilities, and mills), some of which still operate today.
Against incredibly long odds, a rabble of dirt floor farmers fought against their generation’s corporate billionaires, and won for themselves a fairer economy, a more representative democracy, and a future where their children would have more freedoms and fewer constraints. Their story is a testament to the fact that anti-cancer crusaders in Iowa and the anti-data center crowd in Texas could succeed, no matter the odds.
From Tucker’s perspective, today’s populist movements are not even a long-shot. They’re an eventual certainty.
“This movement is bigger than any one candidate or campaign,” he said. “It sometimes takes a while, sometimes more than a generation. But through to this point in the United States, organized people have eventually been successful against organized money every single time.”
