Pro-AI mega donor network amasses nearly $300 million to shape midterms as Democrats told silence is safer than confrontation
Democrats planning to run in November’s midterm elections have been advised not to antagonize pro-AI campaign groups that have amassed almost $300 million to fight for the industry’s priorities.
As FT reports, the warnings by top party consultants, corroborated by people close to four different campaigns and party strategists speaking on the condition of anonymity, come despite internal polling for Democrats showing widespread public support for tougher AI rules.
Pro-AI groups backed by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest names have already announced they will spend millions of dollars in state and local contests in New York, Illinois, California and Virginia to back candidates perceived as supportive of the AI industry.
New York Democratic congressional candidate Alex Bores has come under attack from Leading the Future, a pro-AI Super Pac © Pascal Perich/FT
Democrats are strongly favoured to take back control of the House in November. But few of them have expressly provoked the industry, even as Republicans come under fire for the Trump administration’s embrace of AI.
In Manhattan, Democratic congressional candidate Alex Bores, who led efforts to pass New York’s AI safety bill and is campaigning for more regulation of the industry, has come under attack from Leading the Future, a Super Pac, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money and has raised $125mn to date from donors including venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman.
Bores has also attracted funding from two Super Pacs linked to Anthropic, an AI start-up that has broken with the rest of the industry in calling for tougher standards, including at the state level.
Only a handful of other Democrats — including Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and Scott Wiener in California — have put AI issues front-and-centre of their campaign, FT analysis found.
Mallory McMorrow is one of a handful of Democrats seeking election in the midterms who is putting AI issues at the centre of her campaign © Emily Elconin/Reuters
“You are definitely seeing a chilling effect [on campaigns],” said Alex Jacquez, head of policy at progressive group Groundwork Collaborative and a former Democratic and White House adviser.
“There’s just not a lot of upside in the potential of getting $20mn [spent by pro-AI campaign groups] in your race . . . in a lot of cases it is going to be easier to say nothing.”
Arizona senator Mark Kelly, who has been raising money for Democratic candidates across the country, acknowledged that AI cash was having an impact.
“Unfortunately, there are always concerns, because of the amount of corporate money that gets injected into our political system,” Kelly said. “It always [has a chilling effect] on both sides of the aisle . . . that is not healthy.”
Democrats concerned about AI Pacs pointed to the crypto industry’s push to punish its opponents in the 2024 election cycle.
Fairshake, the main industry-backed cryptocurrency Super Pac, spent roughly $130mn that year and helped defeat Sherrod Brown, a longtime Democratic critic of the technology who was running for re-election to the Senate in Ohio.
An industry-backed cryptocurrency Super Pac helped defeat Sherrod Brown in 2024 when he was running for re-election to the Senate in Ohio © Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
“DC received a clear message that being anti-crypto is a good way to end your career, as it doesn’t represent the will of the voters,” Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong, a key Fairshake donor, wrote following Brown’s defeat.
Some operatives previously involved in pro-crypto groups are now working for Leading the Future. “We have seen this strategy work,” said Jacquez. “[It] is what the tech companies are trying to replicate here.”
Pro-AI groups have had a mixed record in recent Democratic races. In Illinois, just one of four state-level candidates backed by Making Our Tomorrow, a group funded by Meta, won their primaries this year. Leading the Future one won race in which it had backed a candidate, and lost one.
Meanwhile, Valerie Foushee, a North Carolina Democratic candidate supported by the Jobs and Democracy PAC, which backs robust regulation and is funded by Anthropic, won her primary by a small margin. Another candidate backed by the group in Texas is headed to a run-off.
Valerie Foushee, a North Carolina Democratic candidate supported by the Jobs and Democracy PAC, which backs robust regulation, narrowly won her primary © Allen G. Breed/AP
In a surprise development, Anthropic this week confirmed a report by the Transformer website that its donation to the Pac could not be used to directly influence elections, raising questions about the company’s appetite for involvement in the upcoming midterms.
The AI spending spree has led progressive Democrat representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to pledge not to take money from any AI interests, and she has urged other candidates to do the same.
“Dems who take AI $ will lose authority and trust as the public bears the cost,” she wrote on X.
But most Democrats currently in Congress have trodden a more careful line. Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries last year appointed mostly moderate, pro-business members as co-chairs of the House Democratic Commission on AI, which is supposed to help the party develop policy.
Last week, Leading the Future threw its weight behind five moderate House Democrats, including one of the Jeffries committee co-chairs. Two others backed by the Pac are members of a group that last year published an AI plan that pledged to “empower innovation” and called for “collaboration with industry and developers”.
Josh Vlasto, co-head of Leading the Future, said the Pac “will support members and candidates who are engaging thoughtfully and productively on these issues, who see the importance of passing a clear and consistent national framework, who want to put the clickbait politics and rhetoric aside, and work to achieve that goal”.
He added that Leading the Future had targeted Bores because he was the “puppet of an extreme movement”, referring to activists who support immediate curbs on AI development.
Some recent polling has shown a majority of Americans support efforts to maintain US companies’ advantage over Chinese rivals, even as they believe strict rules are necessary.
However many Democrats say there is more to be gained by going on the offensive against the AI industry, claiming the attacks on Bores in New York have only helped raise his profile.
“We are seeing across the country that Pac money is not winning elections,” said Alyssa Cass, a consultant working on Bores’s campaign. “It’s a culture of fear that is divorced from the reality on the ground.”
Being critical of AI “is about the best fight you can politically take on right now,” said Cooper Teboe, a strategist for congressman Ro Khanna, who recently called for “enforceable guardrails” for AI.
Those afraid their stance will prompt an industry-led backlash may be shortsighted, Teboe added. “I do think the next three presidential elections will be fought over trying to figure out [AI].”
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