Bowie County’s data center deal just got dragged into the Georgia governor’s race
NEW BOSTON, Texas. — The 582 acres Bowie County agreed to sell to a data center developer last month has become an attack line in the race for governor of Georgia, where the developer’s chief executive is the Republican nominee.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic nominee and former Atlanta, Ga. mayor, raised the Bowie County sale at a rally with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff at the Georgia Theatre in Athens on Sunday. About 1,400 people attended, according to Athens radio station WUGA.
“He’s almost completed a SEC bracket with the way he’s screwing over communities, including Texas, where one of his many companies is building a data center that the community has said they don’t want in their backyard,” Bottoms said of Rick Jackson, the Alpharetta health care staffing billionaire who won the Republican nomination in June.
“New details just came out this weekend about how Slick Rick tried to hide the fact and shut down community members who are asking questions about the data center that he wants to build,” she said. “I am calling on you today to reveal every single investment that you have. Tell us about every nonprofit that you control and every single contract that you have with the state of Georgia.”
A spokesman for Jackson’s campaign responded by attacking Bottoms’ record as mayor and did not address Texas.
The buyer, Datahub Developers LLC, is registered to Jackson Healthcare’s office park in Alpharetta. Jackson listed himself as the company’s chief executive and president on the financial disclosure he filed with the Georgia State Ethics Commission on April 2. The form describes Datahub’s business as “land development.”
Bowie County deed records, commissioners court minutes and Georgia campaign filings reviewed by TXKtoday show a deal that is further along than county officials described in public and less far along than Bottoms described on Sunday.
What is and is not happening on the ground
Nothing is being built. No deed to Datahub has yet been recorded. No building permit, stormwater notice or utility agreement is on file. Datahub holds a purchase option on 163 adjoining acres that it has not exercised.
What the record does show is that the sale was being prepared for at least five months before the public vote.
Bowie County, the Hooks Special Industrial Development Corp. and the New Boston SIDC bought the tract, north of Interstate 30 between New Boston and Hooks, from Gurdon Timber Ltd. in March 2020. County Judge Bobby Howell said at the Aug. 28 commissioners meeting that the three paid about $1.5 million. The seller kept the oil, gas and other minerals.
Because of that, three separate mineral owners had to agree not to use the surface before a data center could be built.
Commissioners approved the $12 million sale Aug. 28 in front of a courtroom full of residents who opposed it. Howell confirmed the contract includes a confidentiality clause. The Hooks and New Boston SIDC boards approved the sale days later.
The city of New Boston had a water main and sewer force main engineered to the tract in April 2025, 16 months before the vote, according to an easement recorded in June. The engineering drawing is titled “NB SIDC & Redi Water & Sewer Extensions.”
Datahub’s option on the 163 acres next door was signed Dec. 23, 2025, by Bob Powell as the company’s president. Powell runs Foundrie Hyperscale Data, which describes the site on its website as having a 500-megawatt energy service agreement “ready to execute” and a second 500 megawatts under study with the Southwest Power Pool.
What Jackson has said
Jackson has spoken publicly about the project once, without naming it or the county.
On April 2, Macon television station 13WMAZ asked him about a recording from a south Georgia campaign stop in which he told the audience he was invested in a Texas data center.
“Yes, I do,” Jackson said. “I do have an investment and that’s the reason I’m knowledgeable about it.”
He said he had been required to give a letter of credit to the power company and that it had not cost him anything. “I found out, in Georgia is the same way,” he said. “Georgia Power does not pass that cost on to anybody.”
Utilities generally require a letter of credit from a large customer before signing an electric service agreement or starting interconnection studies. Southwestern Electric Power Co., which serves the site, has not said whether it holds one for the New Boston tract or from whom. TXK Today has asked SWEPCO for comment and will update if a response is received.
What his disclosure says
The financial disclosure Jackson amended the same day tells a narrower story than his interview.
The form lists Datahub Developers among the positions he holds, alongside his charities, a biotechnology holding company and a wine importer. It does not list Datahub among the businesses in which he reports owning more than 5 percent or a stake worth more than $5,000. It lists one piece of real estate, 72 acres and a residence in Forsyth County, Georgia. It reports total assets of $3.02 billion and no liabilities.
Three related companies, Datahub Developers Holdings, Datahub Developers Parent and Datahub Developers Texarkana I, were formed at the Jackson Healthcare address by the company’s general counsel, according to Georgia corporate records cited by Courier Georgia, a Democratic-aligned news site. None appears on Jackson’s disclosure or in Bowie County’s deed records.
The form also reports that Jackson or his businesses did $931 million in transactions with the state of Georgia and its agencies from 2021 through 2025. Bottoms’ campaign has made those contracts a central line of attack.
His platform, and the Bowie contract
Jackson’s stated position on data centers is that communities should decide.
“Every community needs to have control of whether they have a data center or not, full stop,” he said at a Georgia Chamber of Commerce luncheon Aug. 6.
In an Aug. 27 column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he laid out five conditions: local support, a community benefit agreement “in writing,” projects that “pay the full cost of the water, power, transmission and other infrastructure they require,” agreements that are “transparent and enforceable,” and an executive order setting environmental standards.
In Bowie County, the contract’s terms are confidential, the sale was approved over public opposition and a city engineered utility lines to the site more than a year before anyone voted.
The “new details” Bottoms cited Sunday appear to be a Sept. 11 Courier Georgia report on the confidentiality clause and an open letter to Jackson from Danny Lee Proctor of Bowie County, who has helped organize opposition to this project and to a separate data center proposal at TexAmericas Center.
“We are against the idea that rural communities should have less influence over their own futures because the people developing around them possess more money, more attorneys, more political connections and more power,” Proctor wrote.
A residents’ group, No Bowie County Data Centers, meets Thursdays at the Dixie Diner and has pressed commissioners on water use and power demand since the spring.
One of five
The county tract is one of five data center or solar projects assembled over the past two years along SWEPCO’s 345-kilovolt line between Northwest Texarkana and Valliant, Oklahoma. Black Mountain Power bought 600 acres at Red Lick in March. TexAmericas Center announced Project Big Pine in April. TotalEnergies’ Red Barn Solar and RWE’s Rabbit’s Foot Solar hold about 6,700 acres under option or ownership to the north and west.
Each followed the same order: mineral waivers, then land, then grid agreements, then a public announcement 12 to 18 months later. On the county tract, that clock started in March. On that schedule, a tenant, if there is one, would not be named until 2027, well after Georgia votes.
What comes next
Bottoms and Jackson have agreed to one debate, a televised town hall hosted by Atlanta News First on Oct. 6. Bottoms has also accepted an Atlanta Press Club debate on Oct. 12 that Jackson has not confirmed. Early voting in Georgia begins Oct. 13. The election is Nov. 3.