Outside, a television van from a local news station idled at the curb, drawn by a race that has become an unlikely flashpoint in the national debate over artificial intelligence. The primary election is Tuesday, and the tech industry has bet more than million that Bores will lose.
That staggering sum, drawn from super PACs affiliated with OpenAI, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and other major tech players, has poured into New York’s 12th Congressional District to defeat Bores. The assemblymember is one of more than six Democrats vying to succeed retiring Representative Jerry Nadler, but he has emerged as the prime target for a coordinated outside spending campaign unlike any other in the country this cycle. According to Federal Election Commission filings, roughly $8 million of the attack ads have been bankrolled by Think Big, a group linked to Leading the Future, a network of super PACs that backs candidates it views as friendly to tech innovation.
Bores, a former employee turned critic of the data analytics firm Palantir, wrote one of the nation’s most aggressive state-level AI laws: the RAISE Act, which establishes guardrails for the technology. He has proposed nationalizing that framework if elected to Congress. That stance has made him the single largest investment Leading the Future has made in any race this election cycle, as the group seeks to make an example of him. “This is the first congressional race in the country where the dividing line is: can the public stand up to the powerful and protect people from threats like AI, or will the most powerful billionaires in this country win again?” Bores’ campaign wrote in a memo last week.
The fight is unfolding in one of the wealthiest and most highly educated districts in the nation, where voters are accustomed to high-stakes political contests. But the scale of outside spending has stunned local political observers. The tech industry’s intervention comes as Congress remains stalled on a comprehensive federal AI framework, a priority the White House has pushed to enact by the end of the year. Efforts to advance a bipartisan standard have been complicated by proposed provisions that would preempt state AI laws, a condition most Democrats have refused to accept.
A Warning for Regulators
Leading the Future has described its mission as supporting “a well balanced, cross-partisan conversation about artificial intelligence, which today starts with passing a strong and thoughtful national regulatory framework.” Critics have accused the group of being anti-regulation, pointing to its aggressive spending against Bores as evidence that the tech industry will use its financial muscle to crush any politician who gets in its way. The group has denied that characterization, but the message to other lawmakers is unmistakable, according to strategists watching the race.
If Leading the Future succeeds in defeating Bores on Tuesday, it will send a clear signal to other state and federal politicians considering sweeping AI rules: there is more money where that came from. “This project of trying to destroy a candidate like Alex, I think, will probably die in New York 12 as well, even if Alex loses the race,” one person close to the campaign said, suggesting that the fight itself has already exposed the lengths to which the tech industry will go to protect its interests. The outcome of Tuesday’s primary will be watched closely not just in Manhattan but in statehouses and boardrooms across the country.
