Democrat candidate for governor Hannah Pingree split from her protege Sunday, proposing a moratorium on AI data centers, her first major policy split with Gov. Janet Mills.

Mills, the two-term-limited governor who was previously Pingree’s boss in the state policy office, recently vetoed an AI center ban.

Pingree, who Mills late in the primary campaign endorsed for the Democrat nomination to succeed her, apparently decided over the weekend fighting AI data centers has widespread popular voter appeal going in to November’s general election.

Staking out an “environmental” platform is likely to attract not only Democrats but unenrolled independents, a third of Maine’s electorate, in Pingree’s fight against Republican Bobby Charles and “independent” Rick Bennett.

“I’m calling for a moratorium on AI data center construction in Maine until we have strong protections and guardrails in place,” Pingree said Sunday. “We need the highest standards in the country to prevent the kind of pollution, jacked up electricity rates, and abuse of communities that we’ve seen from data centers in other parts of the country.”

She called for “clean energy solutions” to “protect our water, our environment and our ratepayers” but didn’t specify a cheaper, reliable energy alternative.

Charles late last month expressed concerns about data centers, saying he would need assurances they would have minimal impact on the environment.

Pingree’s call for a moratorium, which Bennett has said he supports, comes two months after Mills vetoed a bill designed to delay construction of large AI data centers that would have been the first such law in the country.

“A moratorium is appropriate given the impacts of massive data centers in other states on the environment and on electricity rates,” Mills wrote in her veto. “But the final version of this bill fails to allow for a specific project in the Town of Jay that enjoys strong local support from its host community and region.”