The pro-regulation group Public First spent more than $63 million on the 2026 midterms and saw 10 of the 17 congressional candidates it backed win their races, in the first election where artificial intelligence was a central campaign issue. The group, funded by Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei and other AI safety advocates, helped elect the architects of two of the country’s toughest state AI laws — Colorado’s Manny Rutinel and California’s Scott Wiener — who will now take their seats in the House. The rival camp, backed by Marc Andreessen and other tech investors, spent at least $54 million and won 41 of 48 races, many of them in safe seats.
Two law authors head to Washington
Rutinel wrote Colorado’s AI Act, the first comprehensive state AI law in the country, and Wiener authored California’s frontier-model safety bill, the landmark law that set the template for state-level AI rules across America. Both men now carry that record into federal office.
Their arrival in Congress gives the pro-regulation camp something it has lacked: lawmakers who have actually written AI legislation and defended it against industry opposition. Representative Valerie Foushee, another Public First beneficiary who co-chairs the House Democratic Commission on AI, has already promised to regulate AI chatbots and demand federal transparency and technical standards for generative AI.
A $110 million fight, both sides claiming victory
The two funding networks spent more than $110 million between them, and both are claiming success. Leading the Future’s biggest win came in June, when it spent $8 million to help defeat Alex Bores — the New York assemblyman who wrote the state’s AI regulation law — in a primary, against $15 million from Public First on the other side.
But the anti-regulation camp also suffered setbacks, including more than $4 million spent on a South Carolina Senate candidate who lost in a heavily Republican state. The figures are the groups’ own accounting; federal filings tracked separately put their direct spending lower, at about $24 million for Public First and about $35 million for Leading the Future.
What voters said
The money fight played out against a public mood that has turned against the industry. By Election Day, two-thirds of voters said AI will harm society more than it will help, according to the NBC exit poll, and 43 cities voted to restrict data-center development in their communities.
Dozens of Democrats were elected after running on anti-tech platforms, and the debate widened beyond data centers to wealth inequality and the broader dangers of the technology. One Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff of Georgia, won decisively after declaring in his victory speech that tech titans build bunkers while warning the AI they are creating risks human extinction.
Our read: personnel beats spending totals
The headline numbers flatter both sides — Leading the Future’s 41 wins came largely in safe seats, while Public First’s 10 wins put actual AI lawmakers in Congress. The durable result is not the spending totals but the personnel here.
Rutinel and Wiener arrive with bills written and fights fought, which matters more than any super PAC’s win rate. But the math has not changed: as a Leading the Future spokesman noted, AI regulation needs 60 votes in the Senate, and stopping a bill is far easier than passing one. The midterms moved the debate into Congress without settling it.
Why It Matters
For the AI industry, the election means the next Congress will include members who have regulated the technology at state level and are unlikely to be swayed by industry spending alone. For companies building frontier models, the consequence is that federal AI rules — on transparency, safety testing and chatbot accountability — now have sponsors with legislative experience behind them.
The election also showed the limits of money alone: voters backed restrictions on data centers in 43 cities and returned candidates who campaigned against the industry, while the industry’s own response has been to double down rather than retreat yet.
Background
The 2026 midterms were the first US election fought with AI as a central issue, after a year in which data-center construction drew local backlash and AI-enabled cyberattacks rattled voters. Two rival funding networks formed around the question: Public First, pushing stricter guardrails, and Leading the Future, arguing for light-touch rules to preserve American competitiveness.
Both are backed by tech money and both promote AI itself — they differ on who should set the rules. Tuesday’s vote was the first test of which argument voters would reward, and the data-center map it redrew is already reshaping where the industry can build.
Source: Bloomberg’s report on the AI midterm fight and Fast Company’s spending analysis
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