AI tried to bury this politician, now people have actually heard of him

Sometimes the best campaign strategy is having your opponents spend millions trying to destroy you. That's the unexpected position of Alex Bores, a New York state assemblyman running for Congress who's become famous precisely because AI companies want him to disappear.

Since late 2025, a super PAC called Leading the Future, backed by OpenAI, Palantir, and a16z executives, has poured millions into campaigns against Bores. Their crime? He wrote AI safety regulation that these companies apparently hate enough to fund an entire opposition campaign.

The irony is delicious. By spending so aggressively against him, they've turned a relatively unknown state politician into the poster child for AI regulation. Classic Streisand effect in action.

The NY-12 Democratic primary wraps up in June, and while OpenAI and Anthropic battle over who gets to shape AI regulation and who should be punished for trying, Bores is reaping the benefits of their attention. Nothing says "this person is onto something" quite like the industry spending millions to stop them.

For anyone watching the AI regulation debate, this race has become a proxy war. The tech giants are showing their hand about how seriously they take regulatory threats, and they're willing to spend big to influence who makes the rules.

The bigger question is whether this strategy will backfire beyond just name recognition. Voters tend to notice when outside money floods local races, and AI companies openly trying to pick congressional winners might not play as well as they think.