AI Industry's $21M Manhattan Congressional Bet Backfires as Skeptic Micah Lasher Wins Primary

Micah Lasher won the Democratic primary in New York's 12th congressional district on Tuesday by a commanding 39.1% margin, defeating eight candidates — and sending a pointed message to the AI giants who turned a deep-blue Manhattan seat into an unlikely proxy war over tech regulation. At his victory party, Lasher called out the two major AI companies that poured money into the race, vowing he wouldn't take direction from them on protecting workers or children.

The race became a $21 million-plus collision between competing Silicon Valley factions. Think Big, a super PAC backed in part by leaders at OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz, spent roughly $8 million trying to block Assemblymember Alex Bores from winning. On the other side, Jobs and Democracy PAC — supported by donors tied to Anthropic and Adobe — spent more than $13 million backing Bores, a former Palantir employee who championed stronger AI safeguards. Bores had quit Palantir during Trump's first term over concerns about the company's immigration enforcement work.

The irony is stark: both Lasher and Bores supported tighter AI regulation — meaning the anti-regulation money ended up boosting the candidate who is arguably more skeptical of Silicon Valley. Lasher has publicly warned that AI could displace workers, deepen inequality, and strain the environment, and he is a cosponsor of New York's Responsible AI Safety and Education Act, the same legislation that made Bores a target for AI industry groups in the first place.

The race reflects New York's emergence as one of the most aggressive states on AI oversight. State lawmakers have advanced proposals to temporarily freeze permits for large new data centers while officials assess their impact on the electric grid, utility rates, water use, and climate targets — a direct challenge to the industry's expansion ambitions. With Lasher now the heavy favorite in the general election for the deep-blue seat, Washington is likely to gain another voice pushing back on the tech industry's preferred hands-off approach to regulation.