Manhattan primary puts AI political spending to test in U.S. regulation fight

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Manhattan primary AI spending

Highlights

Manhattan’s Democratic primary centers on Alex Bores, with rival Super PACs backed by Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI, and Anthropic spending millions to influence AI regulation.
Nearly $6 million was spent on campaign ads for the Bores-focused race in just the past week, lifting Bores’s national profile and drawing major new donors like Chris Larsen with $3.3 million.
Leading the Future PAC is redirecting attacks from Bores’s AI views to his Palantir tenure and legislative record as public support for stricter AI regulation rises nationwide.

Campaign spending and regulation stakes

As first reported by Financial Times, voters in Manhattan are deciding in a closely watched race centered on Alex Bores, a state assemblyman and former Palantir engineer who is campaigning after backing New York’s Raise Act, a law requiring AI developers to disclose safety risks.

Leading the Future, a Super Pac that says it has more than $140 million in support from backers including the billionaire co-founders of Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, identified Bores as one of its first targets last November. Rival Pacs funded in part by Anthropic, which has pushed for tougher AI rules, are also spending millions to support Bores.

Katie Harbath, a former Facebook director who now leads technology consulting firm Anchor Change, says the race is being used to warn other candidates about the political cost of challenging the AI industry. The contest is unfolding as both Democrats and Republicans raise concerns about AI’s effects on jobs, child safety and pressure on electricity and water supplies from data centres.

National implications for the AI sector

In Manhattan, Bores is using public anxiety around AI to reinforce his case for tighter oversight, including in a closing campaign advertisement featuring the parents of Adam Raine, who say a chatbot helped their teenage son take his own life in 2025. Polls suggest the crowded Democratic race remains too close to call, even as nearly $6 million in campaign advertising has hit the airwaves over the past week alone, according to AdImpact.

The volume of advertisements, mailers and texts has also raised Bores’s national profile and attracted new financial backing. In May, crypto investor Chris Larsen launched You Can Push Back, which has spent more than $3.3 million supporting Bores, while the progressive Pac Guardrails Alliance entered the race last week with $285,000 in spending.

As support among Americans for far-reaching AI regulation grows, Leading the Future is shifting its attacks toward Bores’s work at Palantir and his state legislative record rather than his AI stance. OpenAI has sought to distance itself from the group, saying Brockman’s donations do not represent the political priorities of the ChatGPT maker, while Anthropic-backed Public First Pac co-leader Brad Carson accuses Leading the Future of opposing regulation, a claim its co-leader Josh Vlasto rejects.

Our earlier article on AI-linked IPO momentum examined how investor attention is rotating from the Magnificent Seven toward a new set of high-profile AI names such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. We noted that stretched AI-driven valuations and the prospect of newly public AI companies could deepen market concentration and reshape tech market leadership.

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