New York Assemblymember Alex Bores narrowly lost a Democratic congressional primary in June after a pro-artificial intelligence super PAC spent $8 million to defeat him over his authorship of a state AI safety law. But instead of fading from politics, Bores has become a national inspiration for legislators pushing to regulate the technology.
At the National Conference of State Legislatures summit in Chicago late last month, lawmakers from Vermont to Utah sought out Bores for guidance on drafting AI guardrails, according to interviews with legislators and policy advocates who attended. The gathering marked a turning point in which a politician targeted by Silicon Valley for regulation is now helping set the agenda for other states.
“For legislators who have been focused on tech for a while , like, we’re each in our own battles,” said Vermont Democratic state Representative Monique Priestley, who has fought tech lobbyists for years. “But for people who are coming to the table looking to Alex as inspiration for their own future policy, I think he’s a powerful example of what it looks like to stand up to Big Tech.”
News Summary
- Alex Bores lost the June 23 Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District by approximately four points to fellow Assemblymember Micah Lasher.
- The pro-tech super PAC Leading the Future spent $8 million to defeat Bores over his authorship of New York’s RAISE Act, which imposes safety requirements on large AI model developers.
- Despite the loss, Bores has emerged as a national figure among state legislators pursuing AI regulation, with lawmakers at a July NCSL summit in Chicago seeking his guidance.
- The RAISE Act, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul on December 19, 2025, has informed similar regulatory efforts in Illinois, California, and other states.
- Bores’ Assembly term ends January 1, 2027, and he has indicated he will continue working on AI safety policy.
The RAISE Act and the Primary Assault
Bores’ national profile stems from the Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, which Governor Kathy Hochul signed on December 19, 2025. The legislation requires developers of the largest frontier AI models to publish safety protocols, report critical incidents within 72 hours, and maintain cybersecurity protections. It also creates a dedicated oversight office within the New York State Department of Financial Services, funded by fees on the developers themselves.
The law applies only to companies that have spent more than $100 million in aggregate compute costs to train frontier models, exempting academic research. Violators face civil penalties of up to $3 million for repeat violations.
That framework drew a fierce response from Leading the Future, a super PAC network launched in August 2025 with backing from OpenAI President Greg Brockman, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and other tech donors. The group accused Bores of undermining American AI competitiveness against China and vowed to spend millions to defeat him in the primary to replace retiring Representative Jerry Nadler.
Leading the Future ultimately poured $8 million into the race, according to Bores and spokesperson Jesse Hunt. Bores lost the June 23 primary to Lasher by approximately four percentage points , 39 percent to 35 percent, according to Associated Press projections.
A ‘Pyrrhic Victory’ for Tech
The industry effort to make an example of Bores appears to have backfired. At the NCSL summit held July 27–29, safety advocates and state legislators said Bores came up frequently in conversations about how to advance AI rules despite industry opposition.
“I had a legislator say to me at NCSL, basically, ‘I want to be the next Alex Bores,’” said Adam Billen, co-executive director of the pro-regulation group Encode AI.
Riki Parikh, policy director at the Alliance for Secure AI, said Bores has become an “avatar for the AI safety movement.” Advocates regularly invoke him when urging state legislators to take the lead. “We pointed to him as an example of something that you could do, or maybe just take what he did and do it in your state,” Parikh said.
Even opponents of strict regulation acknowledged that Bores’ willingness to challenge the industry helped him close the gap. “That message did resonate,” said Jeremy Kudon, executive director of the American Innovators Network, an AI industry group that supports lighter rules. “It didn’t get him past the goal line, but it got him closer to it.”
Bores, in an interview at the conference, credited the Silicon Valley billionaires who targeted him with inadvertently raising his profile. “Spending $8 million is not comfortable, and perhaps without it I might’ve won,” said Bores, who represents parts of Manhattan. “But certainly if you look at the projections of where I was supposed to be at the start of the race and how quickly I shot to the top, I think some portion of that was having the right enemies.”
“They won this race, but it’s going to prove to be a real Pyrrhic victory,” Bores added.
State Legislators Take Note
Bores’ influence was visible across the political spectrum at the Chicago summit. Utah Republican state Representative Doug Fiefia, who recently pushed AI transparency legislation that drew opposition from both industry and the White House, linked his own experience to what happened to Bores.
“Sadly, we’re seeing a lot of influence from Big Tech in state elections. I hope we see less of it, but I think they continue to weigh in , especially on people like me or Alex Bores or others who are leading on tech regulation,” Fiefia said. Fiefia, who defeated an incumbent backed by Leading the Future in a state Senate primary in late July, said he plans to press forward with bills next session.
Maryland Democratic state Senator Katie Fry Hester said she spoke with Bores about a provision in the RAISE Act that funds enforcement through fees on the largest AI developers. She is now considering whether to apply a similar model to fund her state’s attorney general office for data privacy and kids’ online safety enforcement. “So I’m like, why not have both the large language models and the data brokers support the same office [in Maryland], and then we can enforce privacy [rules] on both?” she said.
California Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, who authored the state’s training data transparency law now being challenged by Elon Musk’s xAI, also met with Bores in Chicago. She said she planned to follow up to discuss their shared regulatory approach. “I think it was a very good starting point, so it is interesting to see what happened with Alex,” Irwin said. “But you had different AI money protecting him and then going after him.”
The Money War
Irwin’s comment referred to the unusual dynamic in which Bores was simultaneously attacked and defended by competing factions of the AI industry. While Leading the Future spent $8 million against him, Public First Action , a super PAC network with close ties to Anthropic, which backs tough rules on the technology , spent $12 million to support Bores, according to the POLITICO report. Anthropic is an archrival to OpenAI, whose president helped fund Leading the Future.
Leading the Future’s top officials said it was Bores’ ties to Anthropic that motivated their spending. Bores dismissed that charge as an elaborate conspiracy theory, noting that Leading the Future was created before Nadler announced his retirement and before Bores declared his candidacy. “Three weeks after I declared, they named me the number one enemy in the country,” Bores said. “None of the other groups that ended up supporting me had even been created yet.”
What Comes Next
Bores gave up his Assembly seat to run for Congress and his term officially ends January 1, 2027. He was cagey about his specific plans after leaving office, but strongly suggested he would continue to play a central role in the AI safety movement.
“We have people spending hundreds of millions of dollars to put their profit over our safety and well-being,” Bores said. “And I want to continue to play the role in organizing around that, and making sure that it’s actually Americans’ voices that are heard in dictating how this goes forward.”
In a statement, Hunt did not directly address Bores’ rising influence. “Our record of success in races across the country reflects the public’s desire for elected officials to advance responsible AI policy that protects workers, children, and communities while fostering the innovation needed to unlock AI’s enormous economic potential,” Hunt said. “We believe Congress is the best place to achieve those goals.”
Congress, however, has shown little appetite for new AI legislation, leaving states to fill the gap. With Bores now serving as a template for legislators nationwide, the primary fight that Silicon Valley hoped would chill regulation may instead be accelerating it.