8JUN

AI super PACs spend $150m on primaries

3 min read

11:04UTC

The $100m Leading the Future PAC, backed by OpenAI's Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz, spent against regulation-minded candidates in the 2 June primaries; a $50m counter-PAC has formed.

← Back to Jobs report says fine, layoff report says no Jump to analysis ↓

EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

AI-industry and pro-regulation PACs are spending $150m to shape who wins the primaries.

The $100 million Leading the Future super PAC, backed by Greg Brockman of OpenAI, the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Joe Lonsdale, contested the primaries held on Tuesday 2 June 2026, spending against regulation-minded candidates in California and Montana races ¹. The committee has committed over $100 million to the 2026 midterms and is lined up for the 27 June Louisiana runoff. A $50 million counter-PAC, Public First, has formed to back pro-regulation candidates, bringing combined spending on the question to $150 million.

Primaries are cheaper to influence than general elections and draw far lower turnout, so a relatively small sum can pick favourable nominees before the wider electorate engages. Leading the Future is run in part by a former crypto super-PAC operative reusing the 2024 playbook that flooded primaries early to lock in friendly candidates. The same fight that has stalled in Congress is being settled at the nomination stage instead.

The spending tracks the policy. As state bills such as California's SB 951 advance the case for AI-displacement rules , the industry is contesting the legislators who would write and vote on them. The $150 million committed on both sides signals that the participants expect AI labour policy to be decided in statehouses and primary ballots rather than on the Senate floor, and they are funding the contest accordingly.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

A super PAC is a political fund that can raise and spend unlimited money to influence elections, as long as it does not directly coordinate with a candidate. Two super PACs are now competing in the 2026 US midterm elections over AI regulation. Leading the Future, backed by OpenAI's co-founder Greg Brockman and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has committed over $100 million to defeat candidates who favour regulating AI. In the 2 June primaries it targeted candidates in California and Montana who had backed AI worker-protection bills. A rival group called Public First has formed with $50 million to back the candidates Leading the Future is trying to unseat. The combined $150 million makes the 2026 midterms the most heavily funded AI-regulation election fight in US history. The result will shape whether state-level bills like California's SB 951 can advance through legislatures elected partly on AI-industry money.

What could happen next?

Risk
If Leading the Future defeats even a third of its 2026 primary targets, the legislative path for federal AI workforce measurement funding and state-level displacement notice bills narrows significantly through 2027.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: The 1994 US Health Insurance Association of America's 'Harry and Louise' campaign spent $14 million (roughly $28 million in 2026 dollars) to defeat the Clinton Health Plan by running generic insurance-focused advertising that never mentioned the industry's competitive interests.

The campaign succeeded because it mobilised voter anxiety about a policy that polled broadly popular but felt economically threatening to specific demographics. Leading the Future is using the same playbook: run advertising on economic anxiety themes that do not name AI.

Counter-parallel: The fossil fuel industry's $300 million pre-2016 advertising campaign to prevent carbon pricing legislation failed in most states despite overwhelming spending advantages, because the opposing coalition mobilised a politically diverse counter-narrative.

Public First's $50 million may be structurally better positioned than its budget suggests if it reframes AI regulation as a worker-protection issue in the same districts where Leading the Future is running jobs-focused messaging.

Consensus view: GZERO Media's Ian Bremmer and Brookings governance scholar Darrell West both note that $150 million in combined AI-regulation PAC spending is structurally significant because it targets the committee assignment level, backing legislators on labour, technology, and judiciary subcommittees who set hearing agendas and shape bill language, alongside floor votes.

The GZERO polling result, that 63% of Americans expect AI to reduce employment, creates an unusual electoral geometry where the industry PAC's agenda conflicts with the median voter's economic concern.

Counter-view: Cato Institute's Ryan Bourne argues the $150 million total overstates industry influence in a midterm environment where healthcare costs, housing, and energy dominate voter concerns.

He cites the 2022 crypto PAC experience, where Fairshake spent heavily in primaries but failed to prevent several pro-regulation candidates from advancing in states with high voter salience on financial regulation. The Public First counter-PAC's $50 million mobilises the pro-regulation constituency that polls suggest is numerically larger.

Key tension: Whether Leading the Future's strategy of running advertising on healthcare and jobs without mentioning AI, effectively hiding its agenda from voters, produces durable legislative outcomes or backfires when media coverage links the funding to AI interests.

Sources:FierceBiotech

Mentions:OpenAI →Joe Lonsdale →Louisiana →Montana →SB 951 →California →Fairshake →Cato Institute →GZERO Media →Andreessen Horowitz →Leading the Future →Greg Brockman →Public First Action →

First Reported In

Update #12 · Jobs report says fine, layoff report says no

FierceBiotech· 8 Jun 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

AI super PACs spend $150m on primaries

The venue for AI labour policy has moved from the Senate floor to the primary ballot, where cheap, low-turnout races decide who reaches November.

Led to

California bill sets 90-day AI layoff notice

Leading the Future PAC's primary spending against regulation-minded candidates directly targets the legislators who could advance or block California SB 951 and SB 947.

Occurred 6 Jun 2026

Read story →

Different Perspectives

European workers and regulators

NBER working paper w34995 found European workers use generative AI at 32% versus 43% of US workers, a gap driven by management practice rather than regulation. The EU AI Act's high-risk employment deadline stays at December 2027, leaving European workers facing the same displacement curve two to four years behind the US.

AI industry (Leading the Future PAC, OpenAI, Andreessen Horowitz)

Leading the Future committed over $100 million to the 2026 midterms and targeted regulation-minded candidates in the 2 June primaries; its counter-fund Public First formed at $50 million. The PAC runs advertising on healthcare and jobs without naming AI, mirroring the 1994 insurance industry campaign that defeated the Clinton health plan.

UK youth entering the labour market

UK youth unemployment reached 14.7% in January-March 2026, the highest since 2014, with 22.7% of young jobseekers out of work more than a year. The ONS publishes no AI-exposure breakdown, so policy is being set blind to the channel doing the damage.

US displaced workers (tech and finance)

Tech workers face median reemployment times of 4.7 months, up 47% from 2024, with a hiring pool contracting faster than AI-specialist openings can absorb them. Finance operations workers are the next cohort: 52% of their employers now run agentic AI in the exact functions where most of them work.

TSMC and Taiwan chip supply chain

Nvidia's 17% headcount growth to 42,000 on $81.6 billion in quarterly revenue depends on TSMC's CoWoS advanced packaging capacity constraining H100 and B200 supply, sustaining margins above 70%. The AI build-out's sole headcount-growth story runs through a Taiwan supply chain that has no parallel in downstream software.

Displaced tech workers globally

CrowdStrike's SEC disclosure puts AI attribution on a material regulatory record for the first time, but Oracle's Massachusetts WARN clock expired unfiled after up to 14 workers were logged as remote despite office proximity. The legal apparatus cannot enforce what it cannot see: hybrid reclassification, GCC transfers, and hires never made.