What happened
Groups on both sides of the AI policy debate poured millions into Tuesday's midterm races, with uneven results, TechCrunch reported. Two industry-aligned PACs, American Mission and Building the Future, together put $4.8 million behind Darline Graham's South Carolina Senate bid, which failed. American Mission is the Republican arm of Leading the Future (LTF), whose backers include Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman.
American Mission also backed two Republican House hopefuls, Montana's Aaron Flint and North Carolina's Laurie Buckhout, with more than $500,000 each, and both were defeated. Think Big, LTF's Democratic arm, helped reelect Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz. Anthropic-backed Public First fared better with Democratic candidates than with the Republicans its affiliated PAC supported, and gave $3 million to a PAC backing California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who led his race at publication.
Guardrails Alliance, which seeks to turn donations from AI companies into a liability for politicians, put over $1 million apiece into opposing California Rep. Jimmy Gomez and Flint, both of whom lost, plus $300,000 for Angela Gonzales-Torres, who unseated Gomez. Its political director, Charlie Blaettler, argued that LTF spent relatively little in the general election because it wants to keep its money from becoming a campaign issue.
Context
LTF told TechCrunch it sees primaries as a better use of funds, and it spent $27.38 million there, including $8 million against Alex Bores, a New York Assembly member whose congressional bid failed in June. Separating AI spending from the broader Democratic wave is difficult; Elon Musk reportedly spent half a billion dollars on Republicans, many of whom lost. Both LTF and Guardrails Alliance intend to keep spending.
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