Tech-backed super PACs are spending tens of millions of dollars in the midterms as they try to shape how AI is regulated, and the fight has now landed in New York’s Twelfth Congressional District. One of the leading candidates there is Alex Bores, a former Palantir employee, placing him inside a race that has become a test case for whether big money can move AI politics.
The push is not coming from candidates calling for an outright ban on AI. It is coming from political groups trying to define the issue before voters do, and that is why the spending matters now. In March, a poll found that a majority of voters think the risks of AI outweigh the benefits, a warning sign for an industry trying to turn concern into support.
Leading the Future, which was co-founded by Andreessen Horowitz, has raised more than $140 million and taken money from the VC firm's founders and from Greg Brockman. It says it is focused on “identifying, maintaining, and growing pro-AI candidates,” a regulation-light line that mirrors the strategy crypto and venture-capital firms used with Fairshake in 2024. OpenAI has put out a statement distancing itself from Leading the Future, underscoring how politically sensitive the fight has become.
Across the aisle in this AI scramble, Anthropic has donated $20 million to Public First Action, saying the money is reserved exclusively for AI-education initiatives and “cannot be used for federal election activity.” Public First Action works with super PACs to back candidates with a focus on AI safety, and one of its co-founders has called it “the anti-super PAC super PAC.” That makes the New York race more than just a local contest: it is a collision between two different ideas of what AI politics should look like.
The friction is hard to miss. No leading candidate in the race is arguing for an AI ban, yet AI-aligned political groups are spending heavily anyway, as if the real fight is not over stopping the technology but over who gets to set the rules around it. If those groups can help shape the result in New York’s Twelfth Congressional District, the next battle over AI policy will be fought with a clearer playbook and a lot more money behind it.
