Dem 2028ers Are Scrambling To Get Ahead Of The Ai Panic

Democrats’ potential presidential contenders are rushing to come up with solutions to regulate AI — and to get ahead of a building wave of voter fears about the rapidly advancing technology that could ripple into 2028.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) told POLITICO he’s introducing legislation next week to create a fund that AI companies would pay into to support workers whose jobs could be affected by the technology. It would help them with job training, enhanced unemployment benefits and starting their own businesses.

“I do believe there are benefits, and they could be significant. I also see the national security implications of not getting this right and not being the leader,” Kelly said in an interview Thursday. “This thing can blow up on us — not literally, but blow up metaphorically — at any moment and cause some real damage. We want to be ahead of it.”

He’s far from the only potential 2028 candidate seeking to rein in the sector.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called for “third-party oversight of frontier models” and “strict guardrails” on developing and deploying advanced technology in a Thursday speech at an AI summit — and castigated GOP leaders in Washington who he argued have “abdicated” their responsibility to intervene. The same day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told POLITICO he’s mulling a special session or executive action to advance AI safety. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) called on President Donald Trump to convene a special session of Congress to do the same.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who represents part of Silicon Valley in Congress and has pushed for extensive AI regulation, sent letters to three top Chinese AI labs asking them to work with leading U.S. tech companies to “pace the frontier.”

That’s a sharply divergent path from Democrats focused on the midterms who’ve mostly stuck to their core messaging around the economy in their final sprint to Election Day. While many candidates are hammering their opposition to data centers for allegedly driving up energy costs and straining local resources, several Democrats told POLITICO in recent days they don’t have plans to pivot their ad messaging into a broader call for more AI safeguards. Part of the reason is that they’re worried pro-AI groups might unload a boatload of cash against them in competitive races.

But Democrats with eyes on the White House are playing a longer game. And they have more runway to get ahead of issues that are emerging too late to fully reshape the midterms but are poised to dominate 2028.

“For people who perhaps have a four-year timeline and not a 50-day timeline, they are thinking about the bigger picture. And they want to plant their flag now,” said Rob Flaherty, a top Democratic operative who has been privately strategizing with other party heavyweights on how the left can lead on AI and has spoken to several potential presidential campaigns on the issue.

Politicians in both parties have already pivoted away from pushing data center development this year amid surging public backlash to the server hubs — even as Trump keeps promoting them as a key component of winning the AI arms race with China and dismissing calls for more guardrails on the AI industry overall.

Some Democrats see possible redemption for the industry. Democratic donor Reid Hoffman told POLITICO that AI has been “marketed horribly” to Americans. While he said he’s not personally making a pro-AI stance a prerequisite for earning his 2028 support, he believes “there’s a lane for presidential candidates to be more AI positive” if those in the industry can work to reshape voters’ sharply negative perceptions of the work.

For now, however, many Democrats eyeing 2028 are choosing a different route.

Newsom has signed a spate of AI safety bills, from a sweeping transparency law last year to a pair of industry-backed measures last week that regulate the types of third-party safety checks leading AI labs are now calling for at the national level. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker built on Newsom’s framework when he signed a law earlier this summer requiring independent audits of major AI companies’ safety systems.

Those in Congress have pushed federal legislation: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) introduced a bill earlier this year to stop the federal government from punishing states that seek to regulate AI, while Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) has called for a special committee to explore guardrails on the technology.

Gallego told POLITICO on Thursday he thinks the bipartisan select committee he proposed needs to tackle “all the aspects of AI”: regulating and taxing data centers, dealing with the economic disruptions and integrating AI in a positive way. He said Democrats need to make clear to voters that “we’re here to protect you from the danger of AI.”

Those moves are accelerating amid a deluge of warnings from industry leaders about the technology’s dark potential. Last week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned with a dire message that AI could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” The heads of three of the nation’s leading AI firms all subsequently called for slowdowns.

Their warnings have already seeped into the collective psyche: A POLITICO Poll released this week found nearly two-thirds of Americans now believe there’s a real risk that AI could destroy humanity.

Amid the burgeoning panic, former President Barack Obama last week urged leading Democrats to “get on top of” a comprehensive AI agenda that spans online safety to job displacement.

“It seems that presidential candidates are starting to think about this through a holistic lens that includes safety risks but also economics,” Flaherty said. “Many of them are there on safety, and are now starting to move [forward] on what they’re trying to do on job loss in the long run.”

A number of politicians who had been friendlier to the industry in the past have pivoted hard.

Shapiro started his keynote speech at the AI Horizons summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday by acknowledging his evolving approach over the past year.

“I still believe that opportunity exists [with AI],” Shapiro said. “But as the events of the past several weeks have made even clearer, we cannot ignore the warning signs, nor downplay the risks.”

Adam Wren contributed to this report.