The AI Industry Successfully Defeats Its No. 1 Target

State Assemblyman Micah Lasher was projected to win the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District in Manhattan, a major win for AI industry groups that had targeted his leading opponent.Lasher’s victory over Alex Bores, another assemblyman, came after an industry-funded super PAC pushing against AI regulations spent $8 million attacking Bores. While attributing the win entirely to the AI industry is an oversimplification, its success here is likely to scare many mainstream Democrats away from aggressively confronting it.Lasher, who had the backing of retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Kathy Hochul, also benefited from $10 million in spending from a Bloomberg-backed super PAC. The district, which covers Midtown and upper Manhattan, is heavily Democratic. Both Bores and Lasher ran as mainstream liberals and generally outpaced two candidates who brought more celebrity to the race: Kennedy family member Jack Schlossberg and lawyer George Conway, the ex-husband of Trump aide Kellyanne Conway and a leading figure in the Never Trump movement of former Republicans.But the race ended up as a battle between two opposing wings of the AI industry. The group Leading The Future, which attacked Bores, is closely aligned with the White House, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI, and supports a laissez-faire approach to regulating the powerful technology. The second group, which is more closely aligned with Anthropic and many leading AI researchers, is focused on the potential long-term and existential risks associated with the technology. They formed super PACs to back Bores, ultimately spending more than $10 million to help him. Bores, a 35-year-old data scientist, became a flashpoint in the debate after authoring the RAISE Act, a state-level law regulating the most advanced AI technologies. Leading The Future, which insists only the federal government should regulate AI, made him their first target. RelatedNew YorkDemocratic Primaryartificial intelligence2026 elections