Profile in Courage: Assemblyman Andrew Molitor

New York is notorious for imposing heavy-handed regulations, taxing families out of the state, and pursuing deeply dysfunctional budgeting. Data centers are the latest target of the Empire State, which recently passed a one-year moratorium on these unfairly maligned projects. Fortunately, leaders such as Assemblyman Andrew Molitor (R-Westfield) have boldly criticized anti-data-center policies as misinformed and short-sighted. Representing the 150th Assembly District, Molitor has had the chutzpah to fight back against legislative hypocrisy, calling out double standards that prop up taxpayer-funded initiatives while shutting the door on local private sector growth. Andrew Molitor is a Profile in Courage for defending taxpayers and consumers and pushing for pro-growth policies that would turn his state around.

Since taking office in the New York State Assembly in January 2025, Molitor has made it his mission to fight back against the big government policies causing the Empire State to stagnate and lose population. In June 2026, state lawmakers moved forward with legislation (A. 11560/S. 10642) placing a one-year freeze on new data center construction permits; the ban would apply to any data center with peak energy usage exceeding 20 megawatts. Molitor slammed the proposal, noting that the moratorium still allows the state to proceed with the taxpayer-funded Empire AI project—a consortium of public and private research institutions aimed at advancing artificial intelligence research for the “public good.” Molitor rightly notes, “The state is going to put a moratorium on data centers in places where there could be a former industrial site that could be easily converted into a data center that the local municipality could benefit from the increased tax revenue, but they’re going to be under a moratorium. Meanwhile the state, as long as it’s under an Empire AI project, will be able to create their own data center. The state will still benefit from all those companies that offer artificial intelligence and cloud computing, but they won’t have to allow for those companies to build data centers in their state.”

Molitor’s voice is welcome and refreshing in a debate dominated by misinformation. For example, state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez (D), who introduced the state-wide moratorium, stated, “We need to make sure that we have the appropriate infrastructure and processes in place to protect communities from rising utility bills, protect our environmental resources and actually have a positive vision for what our energy future as a state should look like.” According to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), “Data centers are vital for an innovative future. But they guzzle up tremendous amounts of energy and leave ratepayers footing the bill.”

A recent analysis by the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) casts considerable doubt on these claims. Using state and national data sources, TPA concludes that data centers accounted for 0.2 percent of all water consumption in New York in 2025. Similarly, these innovative projects only comprised 3.5 percent of New York electricity consumption in 2025.

Molitor also recognizes the larger point: the moratorium is a tacit admission of New York’s self-inflicted energy failures. Rather than addressing the root causes of grid capacity issues through expanded energy generation, modernized transmission lines, and rolling back (still onerous) “green” mandates, the state chose to ban a growing industry. Molitor argues that if the state focused on grid reliability and an all-of-the-above energy approach, local governments could rely on existing environmental quality reviews to determine what works best for their communities, without heavy-handed intervention from Albany.

True political courage is defined by a willingness to challenge the status quo, even when it means standing against a powerful legislative majority committed to doing the wrong thing. By exposing state-level hypocrisy on energy policy and fighting tirelessly to rein in taxes and regulatory overreach, Assemblyman Andrew Molitor has proven himself a dedicated defender of economic growth and a champion for New York taxpayers. For fighting this good fight against exceptionally strong populist headwinds, Assemblyman Andrew Molitor is absolutely a Profile in Courage.