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AI super PACs flood money into state elections
/news/2026/08/16/ai-super-pacs-flood-money-into-state-elections/
Sun, 16 Aug 2026 20:50:16 +0000
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The tug-of-war over artificial intelligence regulation is drawing a flood of money to the midterm elections as super PACs on both sides of the debate seek to influence outcomes.
The post AI super PACs flood money into state elections first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
The tug-of-war over artificial intelligence regulation is drawing a flood of money to the midterm elections as super PACs on both sides of the debate seek to influence outcomes.
Like crypto before it, AI is the new technology battleground as pro-innovation and pro-safety groups compete to shape the makeup of the next Congress, and to influence outcomes of some state races.
The spending comes after states have led on AI regulation over the past three years while President Donald Trump has pushed for a federal framework and preemption of “cumbersome” state laws.
Read more: Trump urges Congress to preempt state AI laws
AI-focused PACs have raised $107 million and spent $55.5 million in federal races so far this cycle, according to tracking by Tech Influence Watch, a project of technology writer Molly White.
Some of the biggest spending has been in congressional contests in Alabama, Kentucky, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.
But more than $20 million in AI dollars – mostly from Meta and Google – have also flowed to state-level races, according to The Tech Oversight Project, which launched an AI super PAC ad library in June.
The library has cataloged over 175 ads for federal and state candidates as of this month. Most of the ads do not discuss or highlight AI as a campaign issue, researchers say.
The state funding has largely focused on Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, South Dakota and Texas.
“Big Tech’s AI super PACs are spending a gargantuan amount of money on our elections because they want to write the rules in their favor,” Sacha Haworth, the project’s executive director, said in a June statement announcing the ad library.
Much of the AI money is being spent to elect industry-friendly candidates. But competing super PACs have emerged to bolster pro-regulation candidates.
Read more: AI regulation sparks super PAC battle in midterm elections
Among the major players is Leading the Future, a $140 million pro-AI super PAC network whose key funders include venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman.
Leading the Future mounted an $8 million campaign to defeat New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, a Democrat, in his primary bid for a safely Democratic congressional seat. Bores was targeted after he sponsored AI safety legislation, known as the RAISE Act, which was signed into law last December.
Read more: Hochul signs AI safety bill
Three other AI-focused PACs spent a combined nearly $19 million supporting Bores, according to Tech Influence Watch.
The mega-spending turned the crowded Democratic primary in New York’s 12th congressional district into national news and boosted Bores’ profile. He came in a close second in the June primary.
“The result of the race was clearly to show that what was viewed as a minor or latent issue in politics is actually at the forefront,” Bores told Pluribus News.
Leading the Future is mostly supporting and opposing congressional candidates, although it has endorsed 18 Republican state legislative candidates in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah.
“States play a critical role in getting this right, and we’re proud to champion legislators who are ready to meet that moment,” Zac Moffatt, the PAC’s co-strategist and a former top advisor to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, told The Hill in April.
Leading the Future is also dabbling in governor’s races. It pledged $5 million in Florida in support of U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican frontrunner in Florida’s governor’s race. It also spent $800,000 supporting Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson who won the Republican gubernatorial primary last week.
Jesse Hunt, a Leading the Future spokesperson, told Pluribus News that the organization believes AI policy should be handled at the federal level with a national framework that offers protections while fostering innovation.
“It’s very difficult to maintain all of those things doing it on a state-by-state basis in piecemeal fashion,” Hunt said.
Read more: DeSantis pitches consumer protections for AI, data centers
Meta-funded super PACs are prepared to spend $65 million this cycle in support of pro-AI state-level candidates, including in California, Illinois and Texas, according to reporting by the New York Times. Meta also teamed with Google to create California Leads, a $10 million super PAC to support California legislative candidates, Politico reported in January.
Neither Google or Meta responded to a request for comment.
On the flip side are pro-AI regulation entities. The largest is Public First Action, led by former members of Congress Brad Carson, an Oklahoma Democrat, and Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican.
The bipartisan 501(c)(4) says it “strongly supports the work of state and local legislatures to address emerging AI issues and opposes federal efforts to freeze state progress without adequate federal safeguards.”
In June, Public First Action announced that it had raised $80 million, exceeding its initial $50 million goal. Among its chief donors is the AI company Anthropic which has contributed $40 million. Company CEO, Dario Amodei, also contributed $1 million in May, according to several reports.
“This isn’t a partisan issue – it’s about whether we’ll have meaningful oversight of the most powerful technology ever created,” Stewart said last November when the organization was announced.
Public First’s Jobs and Democracy PAC spent $13 million supporting Bores in his unsuccessful primary race, according to Tech Influence Watch.
Last month, Public First Action announced $15 million to bolster a dozen Republican members of Congress viewed as supportive of “AI security and accountability.”
Public First has also run ads for Donalds in the Florida governor’s race citing his apparent opposition to federal preemption of state AI laws, according to recent reporting by Politico.
Donalds also recently announced federal legislation to regulate data centers and has signaled support for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s AI bill of rights, which did not pass this year.
Neither Donalds’ campaign nor Public First Action responded to a request for comment.
In June, two Democratic operatives formed a new super PAC called Guardrails Alliance to serve as a foil to Leading the Future. Backers include union members, AI safety researchers and progressives, according to the PAC’s website.
Guardrails Alliance touts financial support from current and former OpenAI employees as well as John O’Farrell, a former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. It also did not respond to a request for comment.
“The people who build AI want guardrails. The people who profit from it want immunity. That tells you exactly who Leading the Future is fighting for,” Shaunna Thomas, the PAC’s co-founder, said in a statement last month.
A late entrant, Guardrails Alliance spent $285,000 supporting Bores in the New York congressional primary, according to Tech Influence Watch.
Bores said the lesson of his race is that AI, unlike crypto , is a “broad issue” that impacts virtually everyone and animates donors and voters alike.
“Americans want a say in the development of this technology,” Bores said.The post AI super PACs flood money into state elections first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
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Joe DeMenna: Keep lobbying in the family
/news/2025/10/05/joe-demenna-keep-lobbying-in-the-family/
Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:00:56 +0000
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The DeMenna family has helped shape Arizona law for generations as one of the Arizona Capitol’s most recognizable and respected public affairs firms. Nearly two decades after Kevin DeMenna founded […]
The post Joe DeMenna: Keep lobbying in the family first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
The DeMenna family has helped shape Arizona law for generations as one of the Arizona Capitol’s most recognizable and respected public affairs firms. Nearly two decades after Kevin DeMenna founded DeMenna & Associates in 1998, his sons Joe DeMenna and Ryan DeMenna rebranded the firm to DeMenna Public Affairs in 2017, ushering in the next era of work at the Capitol under the DeMenna name alongside their father. In a recent interview with the Arizona Capitol Times, Joe DeMenna spoke about his role as a partner of the firm.
The questions and answers have been lightly edited for style and clarity.
Tell me about your background. What got you interested in working in this field?
I’m an Arizona native. I’m fifth or sixth generation, depending on who you ask. I graduated from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and then quickly realized that journalism was not for me. It became very clear that you had to really have a thirst for that. But I always really enjoyed writing. I was never a math guy. I was always the language guy. After graduating from college, I worked at the Goldwater Institute, a congressional campaign, and Secretary of State Ken Bennett’s reelection campaign. I finally ended up as a House researcher which was really cool because it’s a bit different from how my brother came up.
What was it like growing up seeing your dad do the work you’re now doing yourself?
When I was growing up, our mindset was that my dad talked on the phone for a living. I had no idea what he did. He’d come home with these big brick cell phones attached to his head, pacing the pool in the backyard and having these intense conversations. Whenever I get a random call, I always have to tell my kids, ‘This is what I do for work.’ It’s scary because history is repeating itself. We totally grew up in the process. I have photos of dad and Barry Aarons holding fundraisers in my backyard for John McCain back when I was a baby. Whether I recognized it or not, that allowed me to learn how to approach people whom others might otherwise find unapproachable.
How influential was your experience working as a House staffer?
I was, in my own words, useless when I got there. I could barely read a bill. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, and I was honestly going through a divorce, so it was a super hard time for me. Still, the House staff under Speaker Andy Tobin felt like a family. They were so understanding and so loving. I know that I was frustrating. They could have canned me any time, but they really helped me grow, especially Ingrid Garvey. She really invested in me as an individual and I owe her so much.
So you joined with your father and brother in 2013. Take me through that process.
In 2013, I came to what was then DeMenna & Associates. Ryan had done his internship in the Senate and then came to work for Dad right out of that. So he had a couple of years on me and they really had quite a little duo that they were doing. It was super cool. I was really honored to be a part of that team and to be added to the mix. We went through a merger with another firm that didn’t turn out quite as well as we’d hoped, which kind of set us back quite a bit. However, it created a situation where we were able to move on to the next chapter of DeMenna, which is DeMenna Public Affairs. We are just lifers here at the Capitol and have a real reverence for the process.
I think what’s especially cool about the family business that we have is that I kind of turned my nose up at it originally, and that’s part of the reason I went to school for journalism. It just seemed a bit silly to just go in nepo baby kind of stuff, but at the same time, when I finally took a good look at the reputation, and the professionalism, and what my dad’s been able to to build here, and the idea that I can work with my brother and continue the family business in a really smart and fun way, how could I possibly pass that up? I get to hang out with them. I get to bring dogs in. We typically work on issues that we like, and I genuinely enjoy what I’m doing. We have a rule here that if our relationships outside of this office go downhill or degrade as a result of what we’re doing, then we walk away. We haven’t walked away yet. I kind of view myself as the John C. Reilly of this office, and I don’t consider that a knock on myself. I’m sort of a jack-of-all trades in that respect. I have a handful of clients, but I also back up Kevin, and I back up Ryan. They are the lobbyists I would hire if I needed to hire a lobbyist, just because of how they operate. They’re so effective and excel at what they do. In 2018, we were voted the best family business by the Phoenix New Times, which is such a huge honor, considering there are so many family businesses in Arizona. The idea that they picked us — I still say that as one of my best accomplishments.
You specialize in marijuana policy. How does one get into that area of politics?
In 2015, my dad had a DUI. He has pancreatitis, which is a well-known fact throughout the Capitol. He was taking oral medication to deal with that. Definitely shouldn’t have been on the road that day. Ryan and I went and got him, and we were like, ‘This is going to be on the front page of the newspaper,’ and sure enough, it was. It was a difficult moment for him and for our family business because we’re Republicans. The white Latter-day Saints, stuffy, chicken dinner, chamber luncheon type of deal. Dad had some marijuana on him at the time, which was included in the arrest record. I had given it to him and we said he’s gotta get off the pills and use cannabis as a titration method. Very quickly after that he and I went and got our medical cards and got legit. I had always found relief with cannabis use but I don’t think I quite recognized what it was that I found as a youngster. We got calls from medical marijuana operators at the time. Mom and Pop shops that needed help and government navigation. Eventually, I became the executive director of the Arizona Dispensaries Association, and it was such a fun learning experience. I have a huge fondness for a lot of operators and a lot of good memories from that time.
What do you do during the interim when lawmakers aren’t in session?
On the lobbying side, the work never stops. For the lawmaker, depending on which one we’re talking about, the work may very well come to a halt. The interim is the time when you take a moment to go door-to-door, talk to lawmakers, and discuss the issues that will arise in the next session, ensuring they have a line of communication and a clear understanding. If your issue is being heard by lawmakers in a January committee for the first time, you’ve messed up.
What’s something people don’t know about lobbying?
A lot of people don’t recognize how benign in nature it can be. They hear about backroom dealings and all the fun things the media portrays, as well as the horror stories. When you break it down into what it is that we do, people are like, oh yeah, that seems like a very basic, smart job. If you are getting sued or are having a legal issue, you can go to court and do it all by yourself. But you probably should hire a lawyer. Not every lawyer is a good person. Just like not every individual in the world is a good person. We’ve got icky and not-icky in all professions. Showing how involved the government is in your daily life, especially if you’re a business that deals with the government, it really becomes an essential component to a lot of businesses. Now, I recognize that politics, just by its very nature, is not something that everybody has an appetite for. In terms of functionality, I view the lobbyist role as essential. And frankly, a lot of the laws written have sort of created that situation, like term limits. We have a new crop of lawmakers who come in every couple of years and we want people to stick around. We like statesmen. I’m not saying anything negative about newbies, but having to educate and update lawmakers on issues every few years can get tedious and it does empower some of the more icky actors.The post Joe DeMenna: Keep lobbying in the family first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
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Constitution Day and the power of states
/news/2025/09/17/constitution-day-and-the-power-of-states/
Wed, 17 Sep 2025 17:27:35 +0000
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Every year on Sept. 17, we mark Constitution Day — an opportunity to reflect both on the genius of the document, but also on the system of government it established. […]
The post Constitution Day and the power of states first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
Lisa Fink
Every year on Sept. 17, we mark Constitution Day — an opportunity to reflect both on the genius of the document, but also on the system of government it established. All too often, our political attention is fixated solely on Washington — Congress, the president, the Supreme Court. However, the Framers never intended for all authority to flow from the nation’s capital. They not only instituted horizontal separation of powers (legislative, executive and judicial) but also vertical separation of powers (national, state and local,). This structure provided the states with the authority to be a barrier or check against federal overreach.
The Constitution created a national government with limited and enumerated powers. The Tenth Amendment is very clear, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution… are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. As James Madison explained in Federalist 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”
The Framers’ design was deliberate because they understood that concentrated power often leads to abuse. Madison proclaimed that “State Legislatures (are) to be (the) sure guardians of the people’s liberty.” The states were to guard against federal encroachment, keeping decisions about schools, public safety and infrastructure close to the people most affected by them.
However, in recent decades, power has steadily drifted toward Washington D.C. Congress has passed sweeping mandates that reach deep into state affairs. Federal agencies have imposed regulations with little regard for local realities. And even the courts, intended to be neutral arbiters, have sometimes expanded federal reach rather than restraining it. The result is an erosion of the balance the Constitution sought to protect.
Restoring that balance is a passion of mine and will require that states reclaim their rightful role. Governors, legislatures, and local officials have both the constitutional authority and the civic duty to stand firm when federal laws and policies stray beyond their proper bounds. We’re not rejecting collaboration with Washington, but when we experience this overreach, we’re obliged to push back and return those decisions that belong closer to home.
It also means strengthening local sovereignty. When local leaders are empowered to govern effectively, they provide a powerful counterweight to centralized power.
There is, however, one challenge the Framers could not have anticipated: the flood of money into state politics from out-of-state and even international sources. Such spending distorts representation and weakens accountability. In the true spirit of the Constitution and federalism, if we are serious about re-centering power in the states, we must also ensure that state policy reflects the will of those who live there — not the priorities of distant donors.
Constitution Day is a reminder that America’s strength lies not in power concentrated in Washington, but in power shared among fifty states, thousands of communities and her citizens. Preserving that design is how we safeguard liberty for all— and how we keep faith with the Constitution.
Lisa Fink is a Republican Arizona representative for Legislative District 27.The post Constitution Day and the power of states first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
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Do the right thing? Redistricting in mid-decade is unethical
/news/2025/08/14/do-the-right-thing-redistricting-in-mid-decade-is-unethical/
Thu, 14 Aug 2025 19:13:06 +0000
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According to recent reports, President Trump has pressured Texas Republicans to do a mid-decade redistricting. The drawing of new district boundaries is done after each decennial census, as required by […]
The post Do the right thing? Redistricting in mid-decade is unethical first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
Nelson Morgan
According to recent reports, President Trump has pressured Texas Republicans to do a mid-decade redistricting. The drawing of new district boundaries is done after each decennial census, as required by the U.S. Constitution to (re)allocate voting power based on population changes. However, with the U.S. House Republican majority at risk in the 2026 elections, pressure is building to further gerrymander an already-unfair map in Texas, to potentially gain as many as five seats in the chamber. This would probably be done by packing even more likely Democratic voters into a smaller number of districts and would also likely be a racially gerrymandered map.
Deborah Howard
While this Texas change has not yet been done, the fact that it is being pursued has evoked a rapid response from prominent progressives, ranging from Governor Newsom in California to Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias and Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin. They have all pointed out that Democrats, too, can play the same game, potentially manipulating congressional district boundaries in a mid-decade gerrymander in strongly blue states like California, matching the effect of Republican efforts in Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere.
Mid-decade redistricting, undertaken with the explicit goal of achieving a partisan advantage, will undermine the democratic process, stifle genuine representation, and further erode public trust in the integrity of our elections. Texas Republicans want to capture votes, not earn them. As undemocratic as this effort is, in Texas, it is legal. But that does not make it right, or even smart. It could easily fail.
For the record, the Princeton Gerrymander Project gave the existing congressional map an “F” for partisan fairness, giving Republicans 25 seats and Democrats 13. The Texan Republicans had already gerrymandered this map to extreme partisan advantage. A more aggressive re-do threatens a “dummymander” — a loss of seats because you are greedy.
Sam Wang, author of Fixing Bugs in Democracy, has this to say: “… analysis by the Electoral Innovation Lab suggests that Trump’s redistricting push could backfire spectacularly. Indeed, in 2026, such an aggressive map could end up giving Democrats 25 out of 38 seats.”
To paraphrase Newton, every action has an equal and opposite reaction: Voting rights champions are getting on board with the idea of retaliatory gerrymandering. Marc Elias says, “Finally, states with Democratic trifectas should restart their redistricting processes now to explore the feasibility of reducing — or eliminating — Republican leaning congressional districts in their states. There will no doubt be barriers, legal and political, in some places, but now is the time to think creatively and strategically about how we overcome them.”
This tit-for-tat strategy may be rational when considering the rapid-(d)evolution of the Roberts court’s refusal to protect voting rights for racial minorities in redistricting, coupled with their passive or supportive views on redistricting for partisan advantage. It seems like every day, there is a new detail or analysis on the likely success or impact of such actions. Lawyers and pundits will be busy for months.
We do hope that these reactions don’t signal the end of a trend toward the creation of Independent Redistricting Commissions (IRCs), which can, in principle, generate district maps that lead to fairer representation. Perhaps reactive Democratic gerrymanders can be implemented explicitly as temporary measures. Or perhaps when there is a better federal government in place, a law can be passed mandating IRCs (one of the provisions of the “Freedom to Vote Act” introduced in 2019 and again in 2021), removing the temptation for politicians to choose their preferred voters.
As non-lawyers and Arizonans, we can only offer a “big picture” perspective. Government exists to serve the needs of the community, not the other way around. While Texas Republicans are busy seeking ways to retain and expand their political power in the next election, they are failing the citizens of their state to meet their needs right now. And this is not confined to electoral politics — for instance, recent flooding in Texas was a natural disaster, but the slow FEMA response was purely manmade and political.
Fair elections start with fair maps; fair maps lead to a responsive democracy. If we want a better government, we need to elect people who want to govern for the common good: those who will do the right thing.
Deborah Howard served as a special assistant in the U.S. Department of Labor under President Reagan and is a candidate for the Arizona House of Representatives, LD27.
Nelson Morgan is a retired University of California at Berkeley faculty member and research scientist, and is the chair of the Census and Redistricting Committee for the Arizona Democratic Party.The post Do the right thing? Redistricting in mid-decade is unethical first appeared on Arizona Capitol Times.]]>
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Hobbs breaks state veto record thanks to budget bills
/news/2025/06/27/hobbs-breaks-state-veto-record-thanks-to-budget-bills/
Fri, 27 Jun 2025 17:11:15 +0000