Check your mailbox, social media feed or local television station, and you'll be reminded often that another noisy campaign season has begun.

The corny sophistry and outright smears come in a torrent. The sentimental in-it-for-the-folks rhetoric runs like sap from a stack of Hallmark cards. Oh, the joys of watching reasonably intelligent people roll around in the advertising muck in the name of a higher calling to serve.

You're hearing a lot now, and no doubt the volume will be so loud on Election Day you'll be driven to distraction.

What you're not hearing much about from candidates is precisely where they stand on Nevada's headlong rush to develop water- and energy-sucking data centers in the driest state in the nation. It's a state, I should add, whose major power utility acknowledges that it doesn't have the capacity to provide the electricity required to operate the data centers currently under development.

Alarm bells are ringing across the country on this issue. It's not surprising that a new Gallup poll finds 71 percent of Americans are opposed to having artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in their communities. That's far higher than the 53 percent who are against having a nuclear power plant in their area.

The two industries aren't as unrelated as they might seem, not with the ongoing promotion of a new generation of nuclear power plants known as Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Nevada, of course, has its own fraught history when it comes to things nuclear, from the days of the Nevada Test Site to the showdown over the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste storage site.

The issue isn't merely political or economic. In Nevada, it's existential — especially in the land of little rain that depends on winnowing water supplies from the Colorado River in the south and depleted Sierra Nevada snowpacks in the north. It affects the entire state and should be assessed at that level.

Rural utility cooperatives across the state continue to be courted by data center developers in communities where promises of economic and job growth are powerful elixirs. But the Nevada Rural Electric Association (NREA), which represents consumer-owned utilities across the state, has taken a cautious approach. If only other local boards, councils, commissions and the state Legislature had been as circumspect.

Nevada's data center developers, most of whom don't actually live in the state, enjoy the generous benefits we provide them in the form of millions in tax abatements. Serious questions have been raised about whether they've been forthcoming about providing information on those breaks to the public. They also largely get a pass thanks to our long tradition of boomtown politicians and business promoters who root for economic growth in almost any form.

One bright spot: After considerable public pushback, last week the Reno City Council decided to move forward with a moratorium on data center development while it studies the issues in the fastest-warming city in America.

In Carson City, Gov. Joe Lombardo (R) is firmly fixed on the side of development. He appears confident that the risks and costs to individuals are being mitigated along with concerns about water consumption and stress to the power grid.

"To put it in perspective," he says in a campaign video on Facebook, "I'm a supporter of the data centers because of everything I've just described, we have put stopgaps into that system. So, if you're gonna be a data center, you've gotta have a recycle system set up for water use so it's not detrimental to the water table and in the overall consumption of water." He also notes that the infrastructure of the developments cannot affect individual ratepayers.

"All those things are being addressed as part of the solution with the data centers and availability," he continues. "And why, why do we even want them? Why do we even want them? Because it's business development, it's jobs and it's expansion of the economy, and resiliency in the economy during emergencies or whatever the situation may be. And so they are a good solution and they pay their bills. They're a good solution to our economic problems, not the absolute solution but they're part of the solution on our success moving into the future."

Lombardo doesn't mention environmental concerns or the state's clean energy goals, or the fact that the veracity of data center water consumption statistics have been challenged, or the fact that there's increased pressure to use less clean energy sources. But by now everyone should know that's not his thing.

But he does promote the squishy math that data center development creates permanent jobs. Although their construction phase is a job-generator, data centers open few full-time positions. It would be better if the governor — and every other elected official and aspirant to office — started talking seriously about bringing data-related businesses and even computer chip manufacturing to the state.

If we're good enough to play the gushing host to developments that use up precious resources but produce little full-time employment, why not roll out the red carpet to companies that can actually be game-changers for this beleaguered state?

These are questions that voters and the press should be asking — and candidates should be prepared to answer well before Election Day.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family's Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader's Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.