Michigan voters chose former public health official Abdul El-Sayed to face off against U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, the anticipated Republican nominee, in the race for one of Michigan’s seats in the US Senate.

In that primary contest, and already in the Senate race just kicking off, utility bills, data centers and politicians’ relationships with utilities have become top issues.

During the primary campaign, which he won by about 1% of the vote, El-Sayed said his opponent, Congresswoman Haley Stevens had taken donations from political actions groups affiliated with Consumers Energy and DTE Energy, which Stevens’ campaign denied. PBS Newshour rated Stevens’ denial of El-Sayed’s claim “mostly false.”

Brian Wheeler, Media Relations Specialist for Consumers Energy, told T&D World that the utility’s contributions toward politicians are transparent.

“Our political contributions are transparent and come from publicly disclosed employee contributions through CMS Energy Employees for Better Government, our nonpartisan PAC,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler went on to say that affordability is an issue that Consumers Energy cares about and is working to improve.

“Consumers Energy understands many customers are feeling the strain of rising costs across nearly every aspect of life. Easing stress for our customers is our responsibility, which is why Consumers Energy is helping connect customers to millions of dollars in energy assistance. We are committed to reducing bills and are on our customers’ side,” Wheeler said.

No spokesperson for DTE Energy responded to T&D World’s inquiries on this story.

El-Sayed ran a campaign based on pocketbook issues, and said he favors a policy of ensuring data center facilities cannot put undue pressure on the power grid or on electricity rates.

“We want to make sure that if you want to put a data center anywhere that it’s going to meet the following terms: all union labor, no raising our utility rates, increasing our utility reliability, not touching our water,” El-Sayed said in a televised debate.

At a campaign event, El-Sayed said “People really effing hate data centers.” He stopped short of supporting an overall moratorium on data center construction, however.

Stevens favored a federal approach to deal with the impact of data centers on utility bills.

“It is up to federal lawmakers to secure the tax code so that these kajillionaire enterprises are paying their fair share. It is unacceptable that rates would go up as a result,” she said in a televised debate. “I want to force these data centers to pay their utility bills and to pay water bills for folks.”

Stevens also spoke frequently during her campaign about her introduction of the Stop Unfair Electricity Prices Act in the Michigan House of Representatives. This act would establish requirements for when the state secretary of energy may provide financial assistance to regulated investor-owned utilities, among other things.

Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmore, meanwhile, is generally supportive of data center construction, having signed tax break legislation into law and saying data centers will create jobs for Michiganders.

According to Newsweek, Michigan residents paid about 22.01 cents per kWh in May 2026, putting it at 14^th place among US states. This is compared with the top two states, Hawaii, at 52 cents per kWh, and California, at 32.25 cents per kWh.