By the time voters in New York’s 12th congressional district finish deciding their Democratic nominee in June, they may look back and realize they weren’t just choosing a candidate. They were also watching a high-stakes proxy battle over AI policy play out in real time—one that has turned a relatively obscure state assemblyman into an unlikely focal point for the national “AI safety” debate.
Alex Bores, a once-low-profile figure in state politics, has become the center of attention in a way that would be hard to explain without understanding how modern political messaging works when it collides with the tech industry’s most powerful players. According to reporting from The Verge, Bores has been the target of a sustained effort by a super PAC called Leading the Future, which has spent millions attacking him. The twist is that the spending appears to have done what political operatives often fear most: it made Bores more visible, more discussed, and more associated with the very issue his opponents wanted to control.
In other words, the attempt to bury a candidate may have helped create a narrative that now benefits him—at least in terms of name recognition and issue association. And because the issue is AI regulation, the stakes extend far beyond one district. The fight over who gets to regulate AI—and what “regulation” should mean in practice—has become a defining political question for the next phase of the technology’s rollout. Bores has ended up as the human face of that question, whether he asked for it or not.
A campaign shaped by an industry feud
The broader context matters. In late 2025 and into 2026, OpenAI and Anthropic have been locked in a public and political struggle over AI’s future—particularly around regulation. The dispute isn’t only about technical capabilities or corporate strategy. It’s about governance: which frameworks should guide deployment, how safety should be measured, and who should hold authority when the systems are powerful enough to reshape markets, labor, and even national security planning.
That conflict has spilled into elections, where the rules of persuasion are different. In Washington and state capitals, policy arguments can be debated in hearings and white papers. In campaigns, the same arguments are compressed into slogans, attack ads, and voter-facing narratives. The result is that the “AI regulation” conversation becomes less abstract and more personal: it attaches to candidates, voting records, and perceived alignment with the companies and investors shaping the industry.
Bores’ prominence appears to be a direct consequence of that dynamic. The Verge reports that Leading the Future—funded by OpenAI, Palantir, and executives associated with a16z—has spent millions against Bores. That level of funding doesn’t just buy advertising time. It buys repetition, media pickup, and the kind of issue framing that can dominate local races and then echo outward into national coverage.
When a super PAC targets someone, it usually assumes the target will fade. But there’s another effect that can happen instead: the target becomes the story. Every new ad, every new critique, every new round of messaging forces journalists and voters to ask the same question: why this person, and what exactly did they do?
In Bores’ case, the answer appears to be tied to his record on AI regulation.
From state assembly to national poster child
Bores is not described as a household name before this cycle. He’s a New York state assemblyman whose work, until recently, likely lived in the normal rhythms of state legislative attention. But the moment a major super PAC decides to spend heavily against him, his legislative history becomes a campaign asset and a campaign liability at the same time.
The Verge describes him as having written one of the … (the excerpt in the provided material cuts off mid-sentence), but the thrust is clear: Bores has a record connected to AI safety regulation, and that record is now being used—by both sides—to define what he stands for. The super PAC’s attacks reportedly focus on that record, implying that his approach aligns with a regulatory direction the industry wants to resist or reshape.
This is where the Streisand effect comes in—not as a meme, but as a predictable outcome of modern political communication. When opponents try to suppress a candidate’s visibility, they often increase it. They force the public to learn the candidate’s name, then associate that name with the controversy. Even if the message is negative, the candidate becomes memorable. And in a crowded primary, memorability can matter as much as persuasion.
For Bores, the result is that he’s increasingly treated as a symbol of AI safety regulation. Whether that symbolism is fair or complete is almost beside the point. Campaigns don’t require nuance; they require a storyline. And the storyline that has emerged is that Bores is the politician pushing AI safety regulation, while powerful tech-aligned interests are trying to stop him.
That framing can be politically potent. Voters who are skeptical of big tech may see the super PAC spending as proof that the candidate is challenging entrenched power. Voters who are wary of heavy-handed regulation may see the same spending as evidence that the candidate is too aggressive. Either way, the candidate becomes the vessel for a larger argument.
The industry’s money and the mechanics of attention
Leading the Future’s reported funding sources—OpenAI, Palantir, and executives associated with a16z—signal that this isn’t a fringe effort. It’s backed by some of the most influential names in the AI ecosystem, and it suggests that the fight over AI governance has moved beyond boardrooms and into electoral strategy.
But the deeper insight is how money changes the information environment. In a typical race, voters might hear about a candidate through local channels: debates, mailers, community events, and a limited set of local news stories. When a super PAC spends millions, it changes the distribution of attention. It pushes the candidate into broader coverage, increases the frequency of messages, and makes the candidate’s issue positions part of the public conversation.
This is especially true for issues like AI regulation, which many voters may not follow closely. If you’re not already tracking AI policy, you rely on cues. A super PAC attack provides a cue: it tells you what the candidate is supposedly doing, and it implies that the candidate’s actions are significant enough to warrant a major response from powerful interests.
Even if the attack is designed to persuade voters away from Bores, it still teaches voters what Bores is “about.” That can be a gift to the candidate if the electorate is receptive to the underlying issue.
The paradox of opposition spending
There’s a reason political consultants talk about “controlling the narrative.” The goal is to define the candidate’s meaning before voters define it for themselves. But controlling a narrative is harder when the opposition is loud and well-funded. In that scenario, the opposition’s narrative becomes the dominant narrative simply because it’s repeated everywhere.
If Leading the Future is attacking Bores for his AI regulation stance, then Bores’ AI regulation stance becomes the central topic of the race. That means Bores doesn’t get to choose the frame; he inherits it. And if the frame is “AI safety regulation,” then he becomes the face of that policy debate.
This is the unique take embedded in the reporting: the winner of the feud may not be the company or the super PAC. It may be the politician who ends up benefiting from the attention generated by the feud itself.
It’s also a reminder that political spending doesn’t always behave like a lever. Sometimes it behaves like a spotlight. And spotlights can illuminate the very person you intended to keep in the dark.
What “AI safety regulation” means in practice
One reason this race resonates beyond New York is that “AI safety regulation” is a phrase that can mean different things depending on who’s speaking. For some, it implies strict oversight, testing requirements, and enforcement mechanisms that slow down deployment until safety criteria are met. For others, it implies a lighter-touch approach focused on transparency, risk management, and voluntary standards that evolve with technology.
In campaigns, these distinctions can blur. Attack ads may simplify complex policy positions into moral or ideological claims. Supporters may do the same. The result is that voters may end up choosing between competing visions of governance without fully understanding the technical details.
Bores’ role as a symbol could therefore shape how the public thinks about AI regulation generally. If he is portrayed as the champion of AI safety regulation, then his supporters may treat his candidacy as a referendum on whether regulation should be stronger. If he is portrayed as a dangerous regulator, then his opponents may treat his candidacy as a referendum on whether regulation should be restrained.
Either way, the race becomes a proxy for a national argument.
The election as a policy battleground
The Verge’s reporting emphasizes that the OpenAI-Anthropic dispute over AI’s political future is playing out not only in policy circles but in elections. That’s a crucial point. It suggests that the companies aren’t merely lobbying for favorable rules. They’re also shaping the political incentives that determine which lawmakers will be willing to champion certain approaches.
In practical terms, that means the companies are investing in the political infrastructure that supports their preferred regulatory outcomes. Super PACs are one tool. Candidate targeting is another. Media narratives are a third. Together, they create a feedback loop: the more a candidate is defined by a policy stance, the more likely that stance becomes a litmus test for voters and donors.
If Bores wins the primary, he may carry that national attention into the general election, where his AI regulation identity could become even more prominent. If he loses, the attention may still linger—because the story of the race will have already taught the public that AI regulation is a live political issue, not a distant technical debate.
Either outcome reinforces the idea that AI governance is now electoral.
Why this matters for the next phase of AI policy
The June primary is local, but the implications are national. The companies and investors involved in AI policy are not just competing over technology. They’re competing over legitimacy—over who gets to define what safety