New York Assemblymember Alex Bores, a former Palantir engineer who co-authored the state’s frontier AI safety law, is raising a $30 million nonprofit after losing the most expensive House primary of the cycle. Outside groups poured more than $40 million into the race for Representative Jerry Nadler’s open seat, with a super PAC backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz spending $7.6 million against Bores and an Anthropic-funded group spending $20 million in his favor. The loss prompted Bores and his former chief of staff Anna Myers to launch Who Decides on Tuesday with $10 million already committed and a target of $20 million more by 2027.
The money behind the message
Who Decides does not intend to match the spending power of Leading the Future or Build American AI. Instead, the group will channel resources through organizations already operating in eleven battleground states, helping them develop their own agendas rather than imposing a single platform. Bores described the goal as establishing a shared floor of priorities that the broader coalition can support. The approach reflects a calculation that distributed infrastructure beats centralized firepower when the opposition is a narrow slice of Silicon Valley opposed to any regulation at all.
Polling that does not move legislation
Bores cites internal figures showing 80 percent of Americans want more AI regulation across party lines. Independent data points in the same direction: an Annenberg Public Policy Center survey from February and March 2026 found 65 percent of adults say the government has done too little, including 77 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents, and 53 percent of Republicans. The pattern mirrors gun policy, where decades of polling showing 90 percent support for background checks and consistent majorities for stricter laws have yet to produce federal action. In both cases, a diffuse majority confronts a concentrated, well-funded minority.
The industry’s shifting posture
The dynamic shifted last week when Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic. Bores said outreach accelerated immediately, with seven major presidential candidates and sixteen members of Congress making contact since the departure. So far every inbound inquiry has come from Democrats, though Bores said the door remains open regardless of ideology. The episode underscores how quickly the political calculus changes when industry unity fractures. Sam Altman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2023 asking for regulation; by May 2025 he told the Senate Commerce Committee that requirements would stifle innovation. The reversal took two years. The coalition Bores is building is betting the next reversal will not take that long.