Political groups on both sides of the artificial intelligence debate spent millions of dollars on Tuesday’s midterm elections. The results were mixed, and several of the candidates who received the most AI-related money lost their races.
One group opposing AI industry spending is pointing to those losses as support for its strategy. Guardrails Alliance says its aim is to make money from AI companies a political liability for the candidates who accept it.
Industry-Backed Candidates Lose Key Races
Two AI-focused political action committees, American Mission and Building the Future, together spent $4.8 million backing South Carolina Senate candidate Darline Graham. Graham lost her race.
American Mission is the Republican spending arm of Leading the Future, a political group backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. It also spent more than $500,000 each supporting Republican House candidates Aaron Flint in Montana and Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina. Both candidates lost.
Leading the Future’s Democratic arm, Think Big, had a better result. It backed Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who won reelection.
Groups pushing for stronger AI safeguards also had mixed outcomes. Public First, which is backed by Anthropic, supported several Republicans through an affiliated PAC who lost, but it had more success with Democratic candidates.
Public First also gave $3 million to a PAC supporting California state Sen. Scott Wiener. Wiener was leading his race as of Wednesday afternoon, according to TechCrunch.
The Push to Make AI Money “Toxic”
Guardrails Alliance spent more than $1 million each opposing California Rep. Jimmy Gomez and Montana’s Aaron Flint. Both men lost. The group also spent $300,000 supporting Angela Gonzales-Torres, who defeated Gomez.
Charlie Blaettler, the group’s political director, said its ads focus on which candidates take money from the AI industry. He said Leading the Future’s ads rarely mention AI and instead focus on issues popular with each candidate’s voters.
“Our goal is to make AI money politically toxic,” Blaettler said. He argued this is why Leading the Future spent comparatively little in the general election.
“They don’t want their money to become an issue in these elections,” he said. He pointed to the Michigan Senate primary, where pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC spent close to $30 million backing Democrat Haley Stevens against Abdul El-Sayed.
Stevens conceded the primary to El-Sayed, who went on to win the Senate seat. “AIPAC became the story in that race,” Blaettler said.
Leading the Future gives a different explanation. The group told TechCrunch before Election Day that primaries are a better use of its money because spending there builds name recognition and helps candidates set AI policy agendas.
The group spent $27.38 million in the primaries. That included $8 million opposing New York Assembly member Alex Bores, who lost his bid for Congress in June.
When deciding whether to enter a general election race, Leading the Future looks at how competitive the race is and whether its spending could change the outcome. It also weighs whether to save money for future elections.
It is hard to separate the effect of AI spending from the broader Democratic wave on Tuesday. Elon Musk, who reportedly spent about half a billion dollars supporting Republicans, also saw many of his candidates lose. Leading the Future backed some candidates it expected to win who were then defeated by Democrats.
The main dispute between the groups is whether Congress should create a national AI framework that overrides state laws. The alternative is letting states keep the power to set their own safeguards.
Neither side plans to stop. Leading the Future, which supports a single national framework, said it will keep spending in the 2028 elections, while Guardrails Alliance says it will keep opposing candidates backed by the AI industry.
