NEW YORK — Alex Bores’ greatest asset in the competitive primary to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler may be the barrage of attacks against him from the artificial intelligence industry.
The outside spending has transformed the Manhattan assemblymember into a symbol in the fight over how to regulate AI — raising his profile, attracting new allies and lending fresh credibility to his candidacy.
Becoming the poster child for a proxy war between tech industry factions fighting over how to regulate AI has generated national headlines, marquee interviews and endorsements from figures who see Bores as a leading voice for tougher AI oversight. It has also thrust a once-obscure state lawmaker into the center of one of the Democratic Party’s most consequential debates over how to confront the emerging technology.
“There have been times where I wondered if the anti-Bores group was in cahoots with him,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist who’s supporting state Assemblymember Micah Lasher, one of Bores’ opponents in the race. “Alex has a national platform he did not have before, and he is more well-known in the district than he has ever been.”
Bores has been the target of an early barrage of spending from Think Big, a super PAC backed by leaders at OpenAI and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, among others. But that effort has also prompted counter spending from separate pro-Bores entities linked to Anthropic, the AI company that has taken a more favorable view of regulation.
The unyielding focus on AI has also attracted unlikely progressive allies like Our Revolution, a group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
It’s a dynamic that is occurring in other races across the country as leaders in artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency and other emerging industries look to exert their influence in elections at a critical moment, as lawmakers debate how aggressively to regulate the rapidly evolving technologies.
But that spending can have unintended consequences. Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, a group that supports campaign finance reform, said that voters are “really paying attention” to outside groups and are looking at their arguments “with a certain amount of skepticism.” And in a highly-educated electorate like New York’s 12th District, which covers a large swath of Manhattan, voters are likely to take a closer look at the attacks — especially as the general public has a mixed view of AI and is cautious of the technology.
Muller pointed to this year’s Senate election in Illinois, where a crypto-backed PAC spent $10 million to take down Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who was boosted by heavy spending from Gov. J.B. Pritzker and ended up winning by close to 100,000 votes.
“The sheer size and scale and scope of what we are seeing from these particular industries — AI and crypto and kind of tech in general — dwarf anything we have ever seen before,” she said. “Voters are feeling more and more angry about a rigged government system whose policy outcomes are helping the folks who are already at the top.”
A state assemblymember and alum-turned-critic of data analytics company Palantir, Bores has fully embraced the “AI guy” label. He has only been in office since 2023, representing a portion of Manhattan’s East Side that’s viewed as far less politically powerful than the West Side, which Lasher represents. But Bores attracted attention — and drew the ire of the powerful AI industry — for sponsoring the RAISE Act in the state Legislature, one of the country’s landmark laws to establish guardrails for AI.
At an event last week with Rep. Pat Ryan, the first sitting member of the congressional delegation to endorse him — in part because of the AI debate — Bores said he “didn't get into this race to make a point about AI and just AI.” Asked if he’s upset over the campaign now boiling down to that, he said: “It's such an important issue, and so if that's what we're going to fight on, happy to do that.”
Bores’ allies approve of the strategy to lean into it. Ryan told POLITICO he thinks the spending is “10x backfiring.”
“People are smart enough to understand that if people that rich and powerful are coming at him, he must be doing something right,” he said.
Think Big has made the argument that Bores is beholden to Anthropic and other tech billionaires, pointing to those pro-Bores groups that are now spending more combined than Think Big. The group has also noted that he has been the beneficiary of donations from those affiliated with “effective altruism,” a philanthropic movement in which many proponents warn about the existential risks of AI. And it continues to go after his time at Palantir, which has become a flashpoint in Democratic primaries; last week, Think Big started running an ad questioning why he actually left the company.
Josh Vlasto, a spokesperson for Think Big and its affiliated group, Leading the Future, said Bores and his supporters are “defensive and nervous about anything that pierces the veneer that he is a victim.”
“Any support that Alex Bores has is because of the direct financial investments that have been made in him by Anthropic, its investors and the dark money groups it funds,” Vlasto said. “They were with him at the beginning of his campaign, they funded his campaign launch and what they are doing now to prop up his campaign was anticipated long before Leading the Future even existed. Any group or endorser who thinks that by backing Alex Bores they are taking on billionaires is either foolish or needs to do a quick Google search.”
In a statement, Bores spokesperson Alyssa Cass said, “The AI Super PAC run by Trump’s megadonors is now claiming that not only Alex Bores, but the teachers, union workers, and LGBTQ+ advocates who support him were somehow tricked into supporting Alex. It sounds like their AI models might be having hallucinations again.”
Just because Bores has the AI spotlight doesn’t mean winning the primary is a sure shot. He’s up against Lasher, who has a long history in New York politics and the backing of Nadler and other prominent Democrats. Kennedy family scion Jack Schlossberg and former Republican George Conway, both of whom are first-time candidates with high name recognition, are also in the mix.
Public polling in the race is scarce. Internal polls from both Conway’s campaign and a pro-Bores super PAC conducted last week show a tight race, with Bores narrowly in the lead. A significant chunk of voters are still undecided.
Positive advertising for Bores has flooded the airwaves in recent weeks. Since the beginning of May, pro-Bores PACs have placed around $2 million on TV advertisements for the month, according to ad tracker AdImpact. The anti-Bores ads keep coming too, though. Think Big, which started its ad blitz earlier this year but slowed down its spending at the end of April, recently went back on air and had $350,000 booked in May.
Still, the high-profile attacks are helping draw in a broad coalition for Bores that includes union support and progressives. Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, said that the race is “a marquee fight between those who want AI regulated and those who believe AI should be free from any type of government oversight.” Geevarghese knows Bores isn’t on the same page as the group when it comes to military funding for Israel, but said they think it’s “very important to have a powerful voice in Congress to speak up against the tech industry given the existential threat that AI poses.”
“When you ask somebody, ‘What would come to mind when you say leftist progressive,’ it’s probably not Alex Bores,” Geevarghese said. “What sets him apart is his willingness to challenge corporate power — and that appeals to labor, it appeals to people who are concerned about economic inequality and corporate power, and that is a significant segment of the progressive electorate.”
It’s an electorate he’s been clearly courting. In a page on his campaign site with messaging instructions, Bores touts himself as an “an effective lawmaker who’s stood up to powerful interests and spent his career fighting for progressive values” — a message he wants “especially Seniors, Women over the age of 55 and progressive voters” to see.
Cameron Kasky, a co-founder of the gun violence prevention group March for Our Lives, was viewed as the most prominent progressive in the race before he dropped out earlier this year. Kasky, who focused his campaign on criticizing Israel, said it would be “ill-informed to assume the left-wing progressive movement” would let one issue — in this case, Israel and Palestinians — be the sole “determining factor” in choosing a candidate.
“If you look at the broad strokes of it all and not the nitty gritty, it’s probably not a great idea to align with Mike Bloomberg, and it’s probably going to be pretty helpful if you have the evil AI overlords targeting you and spending a lot of money against you,” Kasky, who has not endorsed in the race, said, referring to a pro-Lasher super PAC backed by the former mayor and his former boss.
A big question hovering over the final weeks of the campaign is if the city’s progressive standard-bearer, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, gets involved — and how much of a help he might be. While NY-12 is a deep blue seat, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo had a strong performance in the district in last year’s mayoral primary.
There haven’t been significant signs that Mamdani will play in the race, though Bores, who often likes to mention that he and Mamdani were basketball buddies in Albany, recently said he would “love” to have his backing. Lasher, meanwhile, is getting campaign help from political strategist Morris Katz, an architect of Mamdani’s win last year. While a Mamdani endorsement could be a welcome boost, it could also turn off many Jewish voters — a prominent constituency in the district — who are not fans of the mayor.
Bores’ message, Ryan argued, is crossing ideological lines.
“I've been saying this since 2024: It's less about progressive or moderate right now. It's more about, are you with the people or are you with the elites?” he said. “This issue, in this moment and this race, the amount that the tech billionaires are pouring in, is a microcosm of that.
“The coalition Alex has built represents how we broaden the Democratic Party coalition going forward at the national level,” he continued. “It's around both the substance of what he's putting forward, but also his willingness to go directly at rich and powerful people.”
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/hcWGZBi
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment