New Yorkers are going to the polls today for the Democratic primaries to fill congressional seats. The results will have implications for the entire nation.
There are several key races on the ballot, each highly consequential, but the most impactful one for the AI industry is taking place in the 12th congressional district in Manhattan to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler’s seat. Outside groups have already spent more than $40 million on this one race alone. According to AdImpact, more than $26 million of this has been spent on ads, making it the second most expensive ad spend for a House primary race in recent history.
Eight Democratic candidates are running in the race: key names include Assemblymember Micah Lasher, former Trump senior counselor Kellyanne Conway’s ex-husband and anti-Trump lawyer George Conway, John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, and Assemblymember Alex Bores. The latter on that list, Bores, has been a divisive figure for Silicon Valley and has become a poster child of an AI industry civil war over safety and regulation.
Bores is running on the premise that he will “keep big tech accountable.” He does have a track record of doing so, particularly with his bill, the RAISE Act, a state-level AI safety legislation that forces the top AI companies to draft, publish and follow formalized sets of safety procedures. He has made gunning for federal-level AI regulation a centerpiece of his campaign as well, such as through an AI Dividend program that would have the government send direct payments to Americans whose jobs are replaced by AI.
Bores is also no stranger to the tech industry. The assemblymember has a master’s degree in computer science and worked as a data scientist before starting his political career. His time in the private sector has also included working for Palantir for four years, before he quit for moral reasons over the company’s work for ICE, as he puts it.
His political track record, though, has put him at odds with some of the power players in big tech. A sizable portion of the record money spent on this race has been funneled to oppose Bores’ candidacy, and spent by an organization called Think Big, an arm of pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future.
Who’s behind Leading the Future?
Leading The Future launched last August with backing from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and AI search engine company Perplexity.
The super PAC has not endorsed any competitor to Bores, possibly because his top competitors are not aligned with their regulatory vision either. Fellow assemblymember Lasher has co-sponsored Bores’ RAISE Act, while Schlossberg has deemed the bill “watered down” in a recent interview.
In a backlash to the backlash, Bores has actually ended up getting some money from Silicon Valley interests, too. Numerous AI safety organizations have put their support behind Bores, and so has Public First, an organization formed by former Democratic Rep. Brad Carson last fall in opposition to Leading the Future. Public First has spent millions through its Jobs and Democracy PAC to support Bores’ campaign and advance AI policy that focuses on stricter safeguards. Anthropic has donated $20 million to the organization.
Although OpenAI, the company, has distanced itself from the support its co-founder and president, Brockman, has given to Leading the Future, the stark contrast between the two top super PACs in this race is undeniably mirroring a burgeoning divide in Silicon Valley over the future of AI development and its regulation.
Leading the Future says it isn’t wholesale against the idea of AI regulation, but the guardrails they envision are admittedly lighter and more “pro-innovation” than those championed by the candidates they oppose. Public First Action, on the other hand, says AI safety should be a bigger concern.
Similarly, Anthropic executives have long fashioned themselves as the supporters of stricter federal AI regulation, a stance that has positioned them at odds with the Trump administration. Critics of their stance, including Trump’s AI czar David Sacks, have cast away Anthropic’s warnings as doomerism and fearmongering, deeming the push for regulation as a regulatory capture effort. Instead, these critics say, regulation needs to ensure that the AI industry can innovate at the capacity and pace it wants, because if they don’t, then China will win the AI race. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also kind of blamed Anthropic’s doomerism talk for the Molotov cocktail attack on his home back in April.
The stakes for the politics around AI are huge
With public sentiment around AI rapidly souring yet AI use steadily increasing, the results of today’s race could determine which of these arguments has the most political power with the public. That seems to be how Bores sees it, too.
“If they succeed—if tens of millions of dollars in attack ads can take out a candidate before he ever sets foot in Congress—a chilling effect will sweep into every statehouse and every congressional office in the country,” Bores wrote in a recent opinion piece published in The Nation. “Elected officials and candidates for office will, understandably, try to avoid the issue.”
In the op-ed, Bores also claimed that Democratic leadership is already telling competitive candidates in the 2026 race to avoid talking about AI.
“That is the real wager being made in New York’s 12th Congressional District this June,” Bores wrote.
The latest polls show Bores head-to-head with Micah Lasher, with Jack Schlossberg trailing not too far behind. Voting ends at 9 pm ET tonight.
But this is far from the industry’s only race in the upcoming midterms. For all the candidates it is attacking, Leading The Future also supports a group of Democrats seeking election.
Last month, the super PAC endorsed Oregon Rep. Van Hoyle and New Jersey Rep. Rob Menendez, both of whom won their reelection bids in their respective primaries. The super PAC also backs Rep. Ritchie Torres, who is on the ballot in the Democratic primary today as he vies to hold his seat in Congress representing New York’s 15th congressional district, and Rep. Yvette Clarke, who is running again in the primary for New York’s 9th congressional district.
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