Trump voters in Georgia have been wooed by an unlikely ally: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In the second installment of a documentary from More Perfect Union, the Democratic Socialist congresswoman journeyed to a deep Trump stronghold in Georgia, where residents say a Meta data center is poisoning the water and driving up prices.
“She may be on the left, but on the data center issue seems more centered and genuinely concerned about people,” said Robert Lytten, a resident of Coweta County, where Trump secured two-thirds of the vote in 2024. The president secured the state overall with 50.7 percent of the vote, compared to Kamala Harris’ 48.5 percent.
At first, Lytten viewed the New York representative as an outlandish, far-left fringe figure. But after Ocasio-Cortez traveled to Georgia to witness the fight against data centers reshaping local neighborhoods, his opinion shifted.
“Our fight is in Coweta County,” Lytten’s wife, Connie, told Ocasio-Cortez. “We just had a large parcel of land rezoned for a data center, but we don’t know who it is yet that’s coming.”
There is growing concern over the addition of new data centers in Georgia communities after Meta began constructing a 2.5 million-square-foot facility in 2018 in Morgan County, where the president received more than 70 percent of the vote in 2024.
In the first installment of the documentary, Ocasio-Cortez visited the quaint home of Beverly and her husband, Jeff, nearby, where Beverly handed her a muddied jar filled with brown liquid. The groundwater, she said, had been crystal clear just years earlier.
After filming the documentary last month, the 36-year-old congresswoman held up that same jar of brownish water at a congressional hearing while questioning EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Jessica Kramer about the impact data centers may have on Georgia residents. Kramer, for her part, said she would promptly address the accusations of water poisoning.
Meta, however, has denied that its data center contaminated the water at all.
Still, as Georgia residents see Ocasio-Cortez standing alongside them, it has become difficult for some not to warm to the young progressive.
“This is not a party issue; it’s a people issue,” said Newton County resident and Trump voter Sarah King, standing side-by-side with the 36-year-old congresswoman.
“I think [Georgia voters] would get behind anyone who was going to fight for their rights to clean water and to live their life without dealing with this.”
The far-left Ocasio-Cortez has long served as an unlikely bridge between some members of the left and right. In 2024, she earned nearly 70 percent of her constituents’ votes—even though roughly 40 percent of them also voted for Trump.
“ I’ve been in a lot of political fights that have seemed insurmountable before, that we’ve won,” Cortez said in the documentary. “I just think that, you know, if you think something’s impossible, it’s just— that’s an imagination problem"
