Democrats Backed by Industry Super PACs Are Writing the Party’s AI Plan

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) took to ABC’s Sunday morning show to assure the public that the Democratic Party is taking strong measures to combat the AI Doomsday threat roiling the country. His prime example: a Democratic House commission on artificial intelligence stacked with lawmakers who’ve received a bonanza in campaign funding from Big Tech.

In the interview, Jeffries said the purpose of the Democratic Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, convened last December, was to “evaluate the steps that needed to be done and then present an aggressive framework … so that Congress can act.”

But according to a review of campaign finance records by The Lever, that five-person commission is filled with Democrats who have received outsized financial support this election cycle from AI-linked super PACs, executives, and investors.

The spending seems intended to shape the party’s policy response to AI, particularly if Democrats win a majority in November.

“If it was tone deaf in December to think that the favorite Democrats of tech oligarchs should lead the way on the biggest issue in our political economy, it is a failure of each and every one of the five senses to retain those people in a year of ever increasing anger at data centers and alarm about the good faith of the industry,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of watchdog group Revolving Door Project, which criticized Jeffries’ appointments to the commission last year because of the members’ longstanding record of deference to Silicon Valley.

AI-Optimized Commissioners

The commission’s members are Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.), Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.).

Lofgren, who represents a safe blue California district, has long aligned with the tech industry’s power players. Among the five largest campaign contributors to her all-but-certain reelection efforts this cycle is the tech investor Ron Conway, known as “the Godfather of Silicon Valley.” Conway and his wife have donated $44,000 to Lofgren’s fundraising committee, Lofgren Victory Fund, as well as $14,000 directly to her campaign committee, according to a review of campaign finance records.

Just this week, amid calls for an AI slowdown, Conway launched a new policy initiative, Project Blueprint, with the explicit purpose of mending fences between the AI sector and the Democratic Party. One of its new hires is Jay Carney, former press secretary for the Obama White House, who later sold his services to Big Tech giants like Amazon.

Conway is also a top backer of Leading the Future, a super PAC that launched last year to champion the AI industry. OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of venture capital firm A16z are also among the super PAC’s largest donors.

Armed with a $100 million war chest, Leading the Future has sought to topple candidates who favor AI safety legislation, including Alex Bores, who, as a state assembly member, authored New York’s AI safety law. This summer, when Bores ran in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District, the PAC spent more than $8 million to defeat him.

Following an Anthropic whistleblower sounding the AI Doomsday alarm this week and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s subsequent quasi-heel turn on safety measures, Bores blasted the company’s hypocrisy for opposing regulations and financing Leading the Future.

“Never thought I’d live to see the day when OpenAI gov affairs claims to have supported all the bills they lobbied against,” Bores posted on X.

Gottheimer, co-chair of the Democrats’ AI Commission, has also received campaign backing from Leading the Future, which endorsed his candidacy in April even though he didn’t face a primary challenge this year. The congressman also received a modest contribution from OpenAI’s lead congressional lobbyist, Justin Oswald.

At the same time, another AI political action network, Public First Action, has sung Gottheimer’s praises. As part of an issue campaign to regulate AI-fueled scams, the group spent $119,00 on television ads in New Jersey earlier this year advocating for Gottheimer: “Washington is talking about a law that could block states from keeping us safe from AI scams; that’s why New Jersey needs leaders like Congressman Josh Gottheimer,” said the ad.

Public First Action has received $40 million, the bulk of its overall fundraising, from Anthropic, which has found itself at the center of the recent AI controversy. One of its former researchers went viral after he quit his job and posted a long thread on X warning about the company’s inadequate safeguards against the existential risk of the technology’s deployment.

The bombshell account was especially alarming because Anthropic has been known as a general proponent of AI safety regulation at the federal and state level — although the firm has a history of backing less-than-robust rules. For instance, Anthropic supported a potentially landmark AI safety law in California — but only after it helped weaken some of its key safeguards.

While Anthropic and OpenAI have clashed on AI safety issues, their business interests are aligned on a host of other pressing policy questions, like the need to massively expand data centers. Those stances have pitted the companies against the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has called for a slowdown in the buildout.

Anthropic’s Public First Action has at times lined up against Leading the Future in key primary races, most notably by spending $12 million supporting Bores’s campaign in New York.

However, in other races, Public First Action has just as readily intervened to help establishment candidates defeat progressive insurgents. In North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District, the super PAC spent $1.6 million on ads to help Foushee, co-chair of the AI commission, defeat a progressive challenger in the Democratic primary.

Lieu, another California Democrat on the commission, was named one of D.C.’s “tech titans” in 2025 by the Washingtonian after he introduced the first piece of legislation written by AI. Lieu has been a frequent critic of antitrust efforts to reign in Big Tech and, until recently, has warned against AI regulation that might hamper innovation. In July, he co-sponsored legislation requiring AI companies to implement mandatory kill switches in their technology to shut off AI models if they go rogue.

Lieu pushed that bill earlier this week after the Anthropic whistleblower’s warnings went public, writing on X that the revelations were “Exhibit number 739 for why we need to pass the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Bill asap.”

But questions still remain about whether the Democratic Party will muster the political will, once the media firestorm passes, to regulate the industry that has contributed substantial sums to members of its leading AI commission.