The $27 million Al proxy war over Alex Bores ends in a draw

What happened

41 million warring over Bores’s candidacy. 15 million. All in all, an unusually massive amount of money was spilled for one local election — a primary, no less — because it was seen as a bellwether for how the midterms might go, especially when it comes to AI regulation.

The general election, however, may prove to be a different battlefield. While NY-12 is all but guaranteed to be held by a Democrat come November, the partisan fights over gubernatorial and congressional seats will increasingly come down to whether GOP candidates support Trump, whose views on AI regulation have been increasingly mercurial.

Why it matters

But several factors well outside of AI issues factor into Bores’s loss. In fact, local Manhattan politics likely remained the most important aspect. The 35-year-old assemblyman had entered the race facing a steep challenge against Lasher, long viewed as the protégé of the district’s retiring Congressman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), and backed by a super PAC run by former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

But the national narrative around Bores’s race had a different meaning, given that three of the super PACs supporting him were backed by industry entities critical of OpenAI and other pro-innovation, anti-regulatory industry players. Jobs and Democracy PAC was funded by Public First, a super PAC that had received a $20 million donation from the regulation-focused rival company Anthropic.

Dream NYC received heavy funding from Dan Ziegler, an early Anthropic employee. 5 million donation from crypto billionaire and Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen, who’d explicitly told The New York Times that he intended to push against OpenAI’s influence.

In a statement congratulating Lasher on his victory, Bores noted that he had not initially entered the race to make “a singular point about AI,” but argued that his surprisingly close performance illustrated a political reality that may carry into the general elections. “Though we’ve come up short tonight, the example set here was not the one the AI oligarchs intended. They set out to make people afraid to stand up to them. ”

What to watch

Innumerable other factors will ultimately play a role on voters’ choices, such as inflation, the war with Iran, and data centers, which have become a nationwide concern but a nonfactor in the Manhattan race. But the AI industry’s super PACs have already begun spending millions in other races across the country. 6 million across seven races.

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