June 23 NY-12 primary turns into AI regulation showdown

A brutal, super-expensive June 23 Democratic primary in New York’s 12th Congressional District has shifted from a straightforward contest to replace Jerry Nadler into a proxy fight over how the federal government should regulate artificial intelligence—one tha

On a Manhattan primary stage already known for shaping national political arguments, the race to replace Jerry Nadler is suddenly about far more than one seat.

With Nadler stepping down. New York’s 12th Congressional District—an electoral line that once sent Socialist Party stalwart Meyer London to Washington and later elected Edna Kelly and Shirley Chisholm—has become a referendum on where the Democratic Party. Congress. and the country should head next. In this election cycle, multiple candidates are selling different versions of Democratic priorities. But the contest has been pulled toward one central question: whether and how the United States should regulate artificial intelligence.

At the center of that storm is Alex Bores. a computer scientist by training and a Democratic candidate running in New York’s 12th Congressional District. He is not just campaigning on traditional progressive themes. He is now the focal point for what The New York Times has called an “AI Proxy Fight” and what The Wall Street Journal has framed as “a Bitter AI War.”.

The June 23 Democratic primary is the immediate deadline. The deeper stakes stretch far beyond it.

The arguments in the district run through history and policy. but the fight around Bores has made the race feel like a referendum on the future of governance itself—because Bores. along with state Sen. Andrew Gournardes, has already pushed a state-level AI safety law described as among the strongest in the country.

That law is the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act, approved last year. It requires the largest artificial intelligence developers to develop safety plans and incident-reporting standards intended “to protect against automated crime. bioweapons and other widespread harm and risks to public safety.”.

Bores says he tried to build the bill at the state level because nothing was happening at the federal level. In his telling. the attention that followed came at a moment when President Trump spent much of 2025 cheerleading for an agenda that Bores describes as being pushed by the worst players in the AI industry—and when congressional Democrats were largely silent.

Bores also links the national spotlight to how the political class began to pay attention to his work. He says Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in AI. placing him on a list with Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the pope. He adds that only two other elected officials were on that list—both U.S. senators, Republican Marsha Blackburn and Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy.

For many voters, this is no longer just a congressional contest. It has become a fight over whether AI companies should face meaningful regulation before their systems reshape workplaces, public services, and daily life.

That anxiety is not theoretical. The race is unfolding while polling shows that half of Americans fear AI will put someone they know—or themselves—out of work. And a Johns Hopkins University survey Bores’ campaign and supporters point to says “Most Americans. even those who most appreciate artificial intelligence. strongly support more regulation of it.” The survey also says more than 70% of Americans want the right to interact with a human rather than an AI in medical. legal. educational. and government settings.

Bores favors that direction. And he has tried to turn his personal policy record into a national argument.

After Nadler’s departure. Bores’ candidacy has attracted support from organized labor. including the New York State AFL-CIO and major New York unions such as AFSCME’s DC37. the United Federation of Teachers. and UAW Region 9A. LGBTQ+ groups including Equality New York and the Stonewall Democrats of New York have also backed him.

But the most dramatic shift in the campaign is how Bores has become associated with the broader AI regulation fight.

The money has arrived accordingly.

A political group underwritten by investors in OpenAI spent more than $7 million on ads designed to crush Bores. in a June 23 Democratic primary described as ultracompetitive for a Manhattan-based U.S. House district. The group is called Leading the Future. The list of donors tied to it includes Silicon Valley titans. major venture capitalists. and alumni of President Donald Trump’s Republican administration—including Trump donors such as OpenAI President Greg Brockman. venture capitalist Marc Andreesen. and Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale.

Then another wing of Silicon Valley moved to counter that pressure. Political groups partly funded by Anthropic, the maker of the chatbot Claude, spent more than $10 million boosting Bores’ campaign. Crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, an Anthropic investor, has pledged another $3.5 million.

Some have tried to treat the fight as a family feud between AI investors. But the division appears sharper than that, with regulation emerging as the dividing line.

Morten Bay. an award-winning research fellow at the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. put the point directly: “The lines are being drawn. and this primary is very much an expression of that. The core divide is regulation—whether you’re for or against it.”.

In this race, competing investment-backed efforts aren’t just trying to decide the winner. They are trying to shape what kind of regulation—and what kind of oversight—becomes politically possible.

Bores is proposing a detailed AI Policy Framework for Congress. and the campaign has presented it as a full-throttle alternative to what many members of Congress have produced or even imagined. As Bores’ allies describe it. the idea is not just to call for regulation in general terms. but to bring a workable framework into federal law at the pace AI is advancing.

That is why Bores’ campaign has also treated the super PAC spending as a political test.

The question, as he tells it, is whether democratic institutions can govern this technology before it governs the system of government itself. He also argues the race shows a chance to defeat both the machines of AI and the political machinery backed by wealthy donors.

He points to the nature of the assault: the negative messaging is aimed not only at his record, but at scaring other Democrats who might be inclined to champion AI regulation.

The pressure comes through the form of ads, including attacks connected to his earlier career.

A separate twist has surfaced because Bores previously worked at Palantir. A Fast Company headline summarized it as “A Palantir cofounder is backing a group attacking Alex Bores over his work with… Palantir.” Fast Company reports that hostile ads “allege that Bores made hundreds of thousands of dollars building and selling technology for the agency. ” and they attempt to tie him to Palantir’s current work with ICE.

Fast Company also describes how, inside Palantir, the ads began to irk some employees. Two current employees and three former employees tell Fast Company that they view the campaign as opportunistic. Some believe the ads misrepresent Bores’s record at the company. Others say Palantir’s approach to its work with ICE has changed since Bores left the company many years ago. Several employees said they see the ads as less about immigration enforcement and more about politics within the tech industry. and they point to the PAC funding the campaign. Leading the Future. as evidence that the effort is primarily about countering Bores’s support for AI regulation.

The same Fast Company reporting includes a view from a former Biden administration staffer who, speaking on condition of anonymity, emphasized that the ad campaign was “almost certainly” a response to Bores’s role as a lead sponsor of an AI safety bill in New York.

As the campaign tightens, Bores presents the race as a live focus group on what Americans are feeling as AI changes their lives faster than politics can respond.

He describes what people tell him: that while they see some benefits—medical research and uses in daily tasks—many are terrified about what it means for their kids. what it means for their job. and what it means for the environment. Bores says people tell him the speed of change demands guardrails, and asks: “Why do we not have a say?. Why is Congress not doing anything here?”.

That blend of fear and impatience—paired with public support for regulation—has made the NY-12 race stand out even among a crowded and contentious primary calendar.

Charlotte Alter, a veteran political writer who writes the New Humanism Project blog on Substack, is quoted describing the race as bellwether politics for whether America asserts regulatory control over AI or whether AI oligarchs “will simply own our system of government.”

Bores shares his own version of the stakes. He frames the campaign as a chance to show other members of Congress how to stand up on an issue that voters broadly support. He also argues that winning would give him a voice because he would have beaten the super PAC trying to intimidate other members and because he would have defeated a promised $10 million against him.

The promised amount is part of how Bores has described the threat he is facing. He also argues that, having won on the regulation issue, he could help other lawmakers find a way to challenge powerful tech interests without surrendering to the money.

If Bores wins the primary, his allies believe it could clarify and transform the federal debate about regulating artificial intelligence. If he loses, Bores and others fear it could leave cautious Democrats—New York and beyond—less likely to stand up to AI tech billionaires.

With the midterm election season now underway and the fight centered on affordability and stability across the country, Democrats face a different kind of urgency in this district: the fear that American governance will lag behind the pace of AI.

In Manhattan’s left-leaning 12th district—built over decades by lawmakers who argued for social justice, civil liberties, and equality—the question now is whether regulation will be treated as a serious government task or as something too politically costly to attempt.

For voters watching the money flow around Bores, the June 23 primary day is only one part of the story. The rest is the direction federal policymakers might take once the race ends—especially if the winning candidate is the one whose campaign has already turned AI regulation into the clearest dividing line in the Democratic contest.

New York 12th Congressional District Alex Bores Jerry Nadler AI regulation RAISE Act Responsible AI Safety and Education Act Leading the Future OpenAI Anthropic Chris Larsen Palantir ICE June 23 primary