April 15, Portsmouth, Ohio — By the time Merit Smith met me in his office at the Scioto County Courthouse in southern Ohio last Wednesday, he was out of breath and limping slightly—old knees, he said, as he sat back in his cherry leather chair.
It was only 11 a.m., but he’d spent the entire morning lugging campaign yard signs around town in his blue Chevy pickup truck. Smith jokes he’s been “living in” the truck for the past few months as he campaigns to keep his seat as county commissioner.
The race has become one of the most hotly contested in the county. In January, 67-year-old Smith and his two fellow county commissioners voted to grant Google a 75 percent tax abatement to build a data center in Franklin Furnace, the rural town of about 1,500 that sits on the bank of the Ohio River in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains. Google is seeking nearly 800 acres of land by the river and has plans to build at least 1.7 million square feet of data centers in up to 10 phases over the course of two decades.
