The Democratic primary to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler in Manhattan’s 12th congressional district turned contentious Thursday night. Assembly Member Alex Bores spent much of a PIX 11 televised debate defending himself against charges from two rivals that AI and cryptocurrency industry money has compromised his independence. The June 23 vote is less than three weeks away.
Assembly Member Micah Lasher, who holds a narrow lead over Bores in a recent PIX 11/Emerson College poll, came out swinging within the first 30 seconds of his opening answer. “There’s one candidate on this stage that’s been standing up to Big Tech for more than a decade, one candidate on the stage who has voted consistently for regulation of artificial intelligence, one candidate on this stage who is not backed by any of the big AI companies,” Lasher said. “That candidate is not Alex, that candidate is me.” Jack Schlossberg, social media commentator and grandson of President John F. Kennedy who is polling in third place, pressed in the same direction. “The most important question is whether the regulators are disinterested, and whether or not they are in the pocket of the AI industry,” Schlossberg said.
The money behind those attacks points in different directions. An OpenAI-funded super PAC has spent millions opposing Bores, who has pushed for major AI regulation in New York state, while a separate super PAC linked to Anthropic has spent in support of him. Lasher also cited a super PAC backing Bores that is funded by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, along with Bores’ “A” rating from a pro-crypto group, as evidence Bores is aligned with that industry.
Bores deflected, comparing the attacks to MAGA talking points. If OpenAI is spending millions against him, he argued, then his opponents would be the candidates OpenAI “would be thrilled” to see win. “They’re so feisty today,” Bores said after multiple rounds of attacks on his financial backers. Former Republican and Trump antagonist George Conway, polling fourth in the recent survey, called it a “triangular firing squad.” Lasher pressed his case further in the post-debate spin room, telling reporters, “I commend Alex for doing a very good job perpetrating a fraud on the voters.”
According to City and State, outside spending in the race has reached more than $7.5 million in support of Lasher and $129,000 against him, while Bores has drawn more than $6.3 million in outside support and more than $4.1 million in outside opposition, making it by far the most expensive Democratic primary in New York this spring.
For all the heat, the four candidates onstage found agreement on several points: banning congressional stock trading, banning private immigration prison contracts, taking former Mayor Ed Koch’s name off the Queensboro Bridge, and, with apparent unanimity, Knicks in four. Schlossberg broke from the field on one issue, committing outright to support legislation that would block offensive military aid to Israel. Conway kept to his organizing campaign argument throughout: that none of the policy proposals discussed, which he called “great,” would matter unless President Donald Trump is out of office. “A lot of the debate was weird and beside the point,” Conway told reporters afterward.
Featured image: U.S. House of Representatives / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
