AI Bros Spend $26M in Manhattan Primary Just to Keep a Palantir Nerd Out of Congress
Silicon Valley elites and billionaire Michael Bloomberg drop historic bags to decide who gets to pretend to regulate your algorithms.
If you ever wanted to see what peak establishment cope and billionaire pocket-watching looks like, look no further than New York’s 12th Congressional District. The primary to replace ancient Democratic relic Jerry Nadler turned into an absolute circus, racking up a hilarious $26.3 million in ad spending, according to AdImpact Politics. This officially makes it the second-most expensive House primary in history. The only race that cost more was Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District, where Thomas Massie and Ed Gallrein’s battle saw $33.2 million. But while Kentucky was a real political fight, NY-12 was just a massive, high-priced playground for tech bros and ultra-rich boomers.
The final boss of this primary ended up being Micah Lasher, a total champion of big-government red tape, who secured a narrow dub with 39% of the vote. He managed to defeat State Representative Alex Bores, who pulled in 35%. Bores is a literal computer science nerd with a master’s degree and a former gig as a data scientist at Palantir. But instead of letting a guy who actually knows how to code go to D.C., the Silicon Valley elite decided to drop a historic bag just to keep him out of Congress.
The absolute funniest part of this whole mess is how the tech oligarchs handled Bores. A Silicon Valley-backed super PAC called "Leading the Future" spent over $8 million specifically opposing Bores. According to the Hill, their grand plan was to keep "tech-skeptical" lawmakers out of Washington so they can keep running their monopolies without any annoying government questions. This PAC is funded by the ultimate tech-bro cabal: OpenAI President Greg Brockman and venture capital legends Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. They saw a guy who actually understands safety and decided to delete his political career.
But the drama didn't stop there. The "AI safety" crowd went full beast mode, pouring over $20 million into Bores' campaign. Imagine spending twenty million dollars of absolute, pure capital just to watch your candidate lose by four points. According to AdImpact Politics, Bores had $9.3 million in supportive ad spending, but he also got absolutely blasted with $3.6 million in negative attack ads—the highest amount of hate directed at anyone in the entire race. The sheer amount of cash burning in this proxy war was glorious to watch.
Of course, we can't talk about elite spending without mentioning Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire former NYC Mayor decided he wanted a piece of the action and poured millions of his own personal "bloombucks" into Lasher's campaign, according to FEC documents. Because nothing says "grassroots democracy" like a multi-billionaire using his couch change to buy a congressional seat for his favorite pro-regulation puppet. Thanks to Bloomberg, Lasher enjoyed $8.6 million in supportive ad spending while only facing a measly $1.6 million in negative ads.
At the end of the day, the NY-12 primary was a complete clown show that proved our elections are just high-priced simulations run by tech elites and ancient billionaires. While average residents in Midtown Manhattan are dealing with actual real-world problems, the ruling class is out here spending $26 million to decide which Democrat gets to write useless safety guidelines for ChatGPT. It is absolute, peak comedy.
Lasher is now headed to Washington to join the rest of the federal bureaucracy in writing thousands of pages of red tape that will inevitably do nothing to protect the public but will definitely protect the profits of the tech cartels. The tech bros might have won this round, but the sheer fiscal absurdity of this race will live on forever in the campaign finance hall of fame.
