New York City House primary emerges as key battleground in ‘AI civil war’ | New York

TThe AI ​​industry is spending heavily in the 2026 midterms, hoping to wield influence over the technology’s first generation of legislation, and New York City’s primaries have emerged as a key battleground.

AI-focused Super Pacs have raised more than $100 million this cycle, with $49 million of that spent so far in dozens of congressional races across the country. Half of all spending went to a single Manhattan race: Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the NY-12 district.

And much of that spending targeted a single candidate: Alex Bores, the Democratic assemblyman running to represent New York’s 12th House district. Bores, who worked in technology before turning to politics, found himself at the center of an unlikely proxy war over the industry’s fight for regulatory influence.

The madness happened to Bores a year ago sponsored The Raise Act is the second US state law requiring major AI developers to publish public safety plans. By August the congressional campaign was under siege; Advertisements were being attacked on television, by text message and by mail. The effort was funded by Think Big, an affiliate of Leading the Future, a new bipartisan Super Pac network formed to support “pro-AI” candidates, which poured $8.2 million into the primary.

Only four donors fund $75 million war chest: venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and his wife, Anna, According to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Tech firms warn that the group, like much of Silicon Valley, advocates regulating AI through a federal framework rather than a patchwork of state laws, a compliance minefield that would cede the AI ​​race to China.

However, the Future Leader’s anti-Bores ad blitz triggered a counterattack from a different Super Pac group advocating stronger AI protections. These include You Can Push Back, funded by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, and Jobs and Democracy, the Democrat-focused offshoot of Public First, the Super Pacs network founded by former Democratic congressman from Oklahoma Brad Carson.

The text Carson read sent the Leading the Future message: Organize AI, we will find you wherever you are. The former general partner of Andreessen Horowitz also expressed the same situation in the New York Times. column Last week he accused the industry of trying to intimidate anyone dealing “too aggressively” with AI governance. Leading the Future did not respond to a request for comment.

But Public First’s funding is unclear. The dark money group funding Public First is not required to disclose its donors, but artificial intelligence company Anthropic made public $20 million contribution Since its founding, Anthropic has marketed itself as the conscience of the AI ​​industry: a company racing to build powerful models, warning publicly about the risks they might pose, and even floating the idea of ​​a “temporary pause” in AI development.

Public First has raised another $45 million from a variety of industries, including “people currently working in labs, from OpenAI to Google DeepMind to X,” according to Carson.

Together, the tech-funded Pacs spent nearly $16 million in the NY-12 race to counter ads claiming that the Future Leader was “right-wing billionaires” trying to buy the seat, while Bores was “standing up to Big Tech.” This has turned the race into an “AI civil war,” as Carson puts it.

Bores, meanwhile, turned the primary into a referendum: “This is the first congressional race in the country, where the dividing line is: Can we regulate AI?” says in a campaign video. Once considered the underdog in a competitive race, polls show Bores now in a tight race with New York assemblyman Micah Lasher, who has campaigned in favor of AI guardrails and restricting the influence of Big Tech. “They turned Alex Bores into a national star,” Carson said.

Some of this may be geography as much as reaction — NY-12 leans heavily Democratic, while Leading the Future is run by tech executives close to Trump. Brookings too named New York City is the nation’s most “AI-exposed” county, with one-fifth of the workforce doing jobs that AI can do take it reasonablypredominantly white-collar roles such as software developers, marketers and financial analysts. Brookings says districts like these are “potential homes for some of the most anxious voters of the AI ​​era.”

While Public First positions itself as staunchly opposed to Big Tech’s efforts to control AI policy, industry support could pose the risk of a conflict of interest.

“Tech companies will say ‘this needs to slow down’, but either they don’t think they can do it alone or there really isn’t the political will,” said prolific artificial intelligence expert Henry Ajder. He added that even the most cautious executives are competing in an AI race that creates “constant pressure to bring new models to market quickly.”

Beyond Bores, Public First has focused on supporting candidates who advocate for AI development.

He also gave nearly $1 million to Republican Utah congresswoman Celeste Maloy, who has pushed bipartisan legislation against deepfakes while lobbying for more data centers in Utah. In Texas, he spent $1.5 million to support House candidate Carlos De La Cruz, who has said he is “committed to ensuring the United States wins the AI ​​race against China” and wants to roll back green energy rules, according to his campaign website. He also gave $800,000 to Oklahoma congressman Kevin Hern; he also received money from Leading the Future; The Public First network was founded to fight.

Meanwhile, Public First has also spent heavily on candidates overseeing AI legislation.

The group put $1.6 million toward Rep. Valerie Foushee, who co-chairs the House Democratic AI Committee. Another co-chair, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, launched a $300,000 Public First-funded advertising campaign on the harms of AI. In other words, two-thirds of the Democrats’ AI policy leadership is now backed by a Super Pac funded primarily by Anthropic.

Among the House races seeing the most money from both Leading the Future and Public First are races central to the rural data center rollout. The Pacs spent millions electing AI-friendly candidates in primaries in Utah, Texas, Ohio, Georgia and Kentucky, despite local backlash against data centers.

The playbook is borrowed from the 2024 crypto sprint, where more than $200 million of Pac money helped crypto-ready candidates. earning the overwhelming majority of targeted races — including the $40 million campaign that defeated Sherrod Brown’s Senate bid in Ohio. However, AI has money but no crypto base. In the last election, millions of investors stood to gain significantly if they elected a president who promised to make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet and Bitcoin the world’s superpower.”

Research shows that AI is politically unpopular. A new YouGov questionnaire It found that two-thirds of U.S. voters believe it is moving too quickly, while only one-fifth think its economic impact will be generally positive, and views are equal across parties.

“The dynamics of Wall Street and the opacity of elites making decisions about us that don’t benefit us; I think AI companies are increasingly being viewed in a similar light, whether you’re on the right or the left,” Ajder said.

On Thursday, another AI-focused Super Pac launched: Guardrails Alliance, which is expressly built to Lead the Future. Its supporters include several labor unions and former Indeed CEO Chris Hyams, who resigned last year over AI concerns. This will not require corporate money, a spokesman said.