AI super PACs spend over $20 million in NY-12 primary; Alex Bores loses

Two rival AI-industry-funded super PAC networks spent more than $20 million combined on the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th congressional district, marking the first race in which they went head-to-head backing opposing candidates. Assemblymember Alex Bores, co-author of New York’s RAISE Act — a state law requiring frontier AI developers to publish safety protocols and report severe incidents, signed by Governor Hochul in December 2025 — finished second to fellow Assemblymember Micah Lasher, losing by roughly four percentage points in a crowded field that also included Jack Schlossberg and George Conway.

Jobs and Democracy PAC, an affiliate of the Anthropic-tied Public First Action network, spent close to $13 million supporting Bores. Think Big, an affiliate of the OpenAI- and Andreessen Horowitz-tied Leading the Future network, spent more than $8 million opposing him, with ads that attacked his earlier work at Palantir rather than his AI-safety record directly. Leading the Future has publicly organised around pushing federal pre-emption of state AI regulation; Public First Action has positioned itself as more open to targeted safety rules.

The scale of spending in a single House primary — larger than many statewide races typically see from outside groups — was read as a signal that AI companies and their allied investors now treat state-level legislators who write AI safety law as targets or allies worth contesting directly, rather than lobbying only in Washington or Albany. Bores’s loss, in a district he did not previously represent in Congress, left commentators divided on whether the outcome reflected the PAC spending, the multi-candidate field splitting the anti-Lasher vote, or factors unrelated to AI policy; no single explanation was confirmed by the vote itself.

The race followed months of expanding PAC activity by both networks in earlier 2026 primaries and set up further contests, with reporting noting Leading the Future retained tens of millions more for the broader midterm cycle.