Political groups backing and opposing the AI industry spent millions on Tuesday’s midterm elections, yet the outcome was mixed with several heavily funded candidates losing their races.
Two industry-focused political action committees, American Mission and Building the Future, spent a combined $4.8 million to back South Carolina Senate candidate Darline Graham. She lost the election. American Mission acts as the Republican spending arm of Leading the Future (LTF). LTF is a broader political group backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
American Mission spent more than $500,000 each to support Republican House candidates Aaron Flint in Montana and Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina. Both lost. LTF’s Democratic spending arm, Think Big, had better success backing Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who won reelection.
Groups pushing for stronger AI safeguards also saw varied results. Public First, backed by Anthropic, supported several Republicans who lost through its affiliated PAC but had more success backing Democratic candidates. It also contributed $3 million to a PAC supporting California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who was leading his race at the time of publication.
Meanwhile, Guardrails Alliance, a group seeking to make accepting money from AI companies a political liability, spent more than $1 million each to oppose two candidates who lost: California Rep. Jimmy Gomez and Montana’s Aaron Flint. It also spent $300,000 supporting Angela Gonzales-Torres, who defeated Gomez.
Separating the impact of AI-related spending from the broader Democratic wave that swept Tuesday’s elections is difficult. Elon Musk reportedly poured half a billion dollars into supporting Republicans in the midterms, and many of his candidates lost. Indeed, LTF also backed some candidates it believed were likely to win, only to see them lose to the Democrats.
For LTF, the general election was not the main focus. The group told TechCrunch ahead of Election Day that it thinks primaries are a more effective use of its money. Spending there can build name recognition and help candidates set up AI policy agendas.
LTF spent $27.38 million in the primaries, including $8 million alone on opposing New York Assembly member Alex Bores, who lost his bid for Congress back in June. When deciding whether it is worth jumping into a general election race, LTF assesses how competitive the race is, whether it thinks spending could make a difference, and whether it should keep its powder dry for future elections.
Charlie Blaettler, political director of Guardrails Alliance, had a different theory for why LTF 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 election, in which a pro-Israel lobbying group called AIPAC spent close to $30 million backing Democratic candidate 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. “We know people hate AI billionaires. They hate the people running these companies. They’re very distrustful and disgusted by the political spending and lobbying that the tech industry does. If they spend in a competitive race, they would just become an enormous liability for their candidates.”
The main fight among AI PACs is whether Congress should establish a national AI framework that overrides state laws, or whether states will maintain their own ability to impose safeguards.
Neither side seems poised to back down. LTF, which favours a single national AI framework, told TechCrunch it plans to keep spending in the 2028 elections, while Guardrails Alliance says it wants to keep opposing candidates backed by the AI industry.
Blaettler said that while LTF’s ads rarely touch on AI, instead focusing on popular issues for each candidate, Guardrail Alliance’s ads are specifically about who is taking money from the AI industry.
“Our goal is to make AI money politically toxic,” Blaettler said.
What it means
The industry has learned that direct spending in general elections can backfire when public trust is low. The strategy is shifting toward early investment in primaries to build candidate profiles before the general election debate intensifies.
