Alex Bores, a Manhattan assemblymember, authored the Raise Act, which forces major AI developers to publish public safety plans. A pro industry super PAC network has spent roughly $8.2 million attacking him in Tuesday's Democratic primary.
Alex Bores, a Democratic state assemblymember from Manhattan's west side, wrote one of the first US state laws requiring major AI developers to publish public safety plans. Now a coordinated AI-industry donor network has spent roughly $8.2 million to defeat him in Tuesday's NY-12 Democratic primary. It is the largest single-race concentration of AI-sector campaign spending in the 2026 cycle, and a test of whether a newly organized industry can buy its first legislative correction at the state level.
Bores sponsored the Raise Act, which requires large AI labs to publish detailed safety protocols. The Guardian reports it is the second such state law in the country. It passed roughly a year ago. Within months, a constellation of pro-AI political action committees, anchored by Think Big, an affiliate of the bipartisan network Leading the Future, had identified Bores as the proxy target for a broader argument about whether states or the federal government should set AI rules.
The financial scale is unusual. AI-focused super PACs have raised roughly $100 million in the current midterm cycle, with about $44 million already spent across dozens of congressional races. Nearly half of that outlay has converged on a single Democratic primary in New York's 12th Congressional District, which spans lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. The money is highly concentrated: four donors have contributed roughly $75 million to the broader network, according to Federal Election Commission filings as reported by The Guardian.
The industry frames the fight as a federalism question. The publicly stated position of Leading the Future and its affiliates is that AI policy should be set federally, not through a patchwork of state laws. Critics read the spending differently. Brad Carson, identified by The Guardian as a co-founder of Public First, a pro-safety advocacy group, said the campaign amounted to a message: "regulate AI, and we will find you." A New York Times op-ed characterized the anti-Bores blitz as the industry moving "too aggressively" against a single state legislator. The Guardian's framing of an "AI civil war" captures the rhetorical temperature. The mechanism underneath is campaign finance.
A counter-coalition is also spending. Public First, alongside groups called Jobs and Democracy and You Can Push Back, have raised their own sums to defend Bores and to argue that coordinated pressure is itself the story. Their claim: this is the first cycle in which a new industry has deployed primary elections as a deterrent against any policymaker who touches AI governance. If Bores loses, the message travels. If he wins, the industry recalibrates.
That structural reading is what makes the race more than a local contest. The Raise Act does not ban AI development, levy new taxes, or impose the headline-grabbing restrictions that have defined earlier tech regulation fights. It requires transparency. The fact that transparency alone drew roughly $8 million in attack spending against the bill's author suggests the industry treats disclosure as a category of regulation worth killing at the source.
The risk for both sides is precedent. For the AI industry, spending at this scale to defeat a single state legislator sets a template: identify the lawmaker, identify the primary, outspend the local race. For pro-governance advocates, the same template works in reverse, but it requires matching the industry's fundraising speed, something most state-level coalitions have never had to do. The result, win or lose on Tuesday, will be read as a signal by every state legislator weighing a similar bill in 2027 and beyond.
The primary is Tuesday. New York's 12th District has not historically been a national bellwether. This year it is, by default, the first move in what both sides expect to be a longer fight.