New York City House primary emerges as key battleground in ‘AI civil war’

T he artificial intelligence industry is spending heavily in the 2026 midterms, hoping to secure influence over the technology’s first generation of legislation – and New York City’s primary has emerged as the key battleground. AI-focused Super Pacs have raised roughly $100m this cycle, of which $44m has been spent so far, in dozens of congressional races across the country. Nearly half of all spending has converged on a single Manhattan race: Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the district of NY-12. And much of that spending has targeted a single candidate: Democratic assemblymember Alex Bores, who is running to represent New York’s 12th House district. Bores, who worked in tech before his pivot to politics, has found himself at the unlikely center of a proxy battle for the industry’s tussle for regulatory influence. The frenzy began a year ago, when Bores sponsored the Raise Act, the second-ever US state law requiring major AI developers to publish public safety plans. By August, his congressional campaign was under siege – attack ads on TV, by text, in the mail. The effort has been funded by Think Big, an affiliate of Leading the Future, a new bipartisan network of Super Pacs created to back “pro-AI” candidates, which has poured $8.2m into the primary. Just four donors fund its $75m war chest: venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman with his wife, Anna, according to data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC). …