New Democrat Pac Hits Gop On Ai In Tight Midterm Races

A new super PAC created by two longtime Democratic operatives is launching its “opening salvo” this week, spending $4 million across four key House races to portray Republicans as beholden to the artificial intelligence lobby.

It’s the first ad campaign from Tomorrow Together, a tech-focused political group created last month by Rob Flaherty, the digital strategy head for former President Joe Biden, and Karthik Ganapathy, a former communications director for Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The two operatives, who come from different wings of their party, said the eleventh-hour entrance is about more than beating Republicans in the midterms. As more eyes turn to the upcoming 2028 race, they’re hoping to narrow in on a winning AI agenda for Democrats.

“Our goal is both winning elections, but also figuring out, sort of testing the seeds of the arguments that are going to be important for Democrats as they have to face down this issue in 2028,” Flaherty said. “It's as much an experiment as it is an ad buy.”

Even as they prep for an anticipated midterm win next month, the Democratic Party is still searching for a coherent message on AI, data centers and its approach to Big Tech. Democratic megadonors like Ron Conway, a Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist, have donated hundreds of thousands to Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network pushing for lighter rules on the technology. And while Conway spokesperson Jay Carney told POLITICO recently that Conway now regrets the donation, he also said Democrats shouldn’t needlessly antagonize the AI industry.

Flaherty and Ganapathy are taking a different approach. As the public continues to sour on AI, they say Democrats should run hard at a populist message that pits their party against Silicon Valley billionaires and a technology they say threatens to harm children, upend the job market or even end the human race.

“Voters hate this shit,” said Flaherty. “I mean, this is like a nitroglycerin issue.”

The new ad campaign targets four House Republican incumbents locked in extremely tight races — Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania’s 8th District, Juan Ciscomani in Arizona’s 6th District, Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd District and Tom Barrett in Michigan’s 7th District. All four backed last year’s unsuccessful push to block states from regulating the AI industry, a stance the ads hammer home. The vote was on the president’s signature tax cut legislation but included a provision for a state AI law moratorium, a policy defended by Republicans who want to stop a patchwork of different state laws from bogging down innovation.

The campaigns for Bresnahan, Ciscomani, Van Orden and Barrett did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Some of the ads focus on the risk of kids being “groomed” and “manipulated” by AI chatbots, before slamming the Republicans for getting in the way of state-level safety laws. Others tie the GOP lawmakers’ support for pro-AI industry policies to an array of concerns, from data centers to job loss and “the end of the world,” before ending with the tagline: “Lining their pockets, emptying yours.”

In recent polling conducted by Tomorrow Together to find ways to attack Republicans on the issue, Flaherty and Ganapathy found that bans on state AI rules were even more unpopular than data center buildouts — suggesting voters may be shifting from narrower concerns about the impact of AI infrastructure toward a wider set of grievances against the industry writ large.

“People's concerns are getting more global about technology,” said Ganapathy, who explained that the dynamic could give Democrats a big midterm boost. “Republicans are on the wrong side of an 80-20 issue.” Flaherty was more blunt. “I want Republicans to eat shit for being so wrong about this.”

The Democratic Party remains divided over Silicon Valley, which swung toward President Donald Trump ahead of his 2024 win. Some Democrats have since sought to mend fences with the tech sector, and have shied away from strict regulations on AI.

But while hammering vulnerable Republicans ahead of Nov. 3 remains their focus, Flaherty and Ganapathy also hope to show Democrats that confronting the AI industry is a winning strategy.

Ganapathy said there is “zero risk to being anti-Big Tech CEO at this moment.” And he suggested his party still has time to take a more aggressive approach to Silicon Valley.

“You have a setup here where the Republican Party is the one that's pushing no guardrails — just for unmitigated adoption of this technology — and you have Democrats sort of figuring out where we are in it,” Ganapathy said. “That's a way better position to be in than, ‘We know where we stand, and it is with the billionaires.’”

Other Democrats are seeing signs that an adversarial approach to AI could boost their party’s prospects.

David Shor, head of data science at the Democratic firm Blue Rose Research, pointed to polling that suggests the issue increasingly resonates with voters.

“This is still an affordability, cost of living election,” he said. “But we're getting to the point where I think AI has graduated from being this really niche issue to being something that regular people are talking about.”

Shor said he’s seen an especially large spike in fears that AI could cause catastrophic harm or even end humanity — and that Democrats would be smart to address those fears.

“The first political party and the first politicians who can speak with this kind of sci-fi register will earn enormous dividends,” he said.

A version of this story first appeared in Decoded by POLITICO, the must-read briefing on the people, power moves, policy battles and market shifts defining what’s next in global technology. Sign up to subscribe to the newsletter and listen to the podcast.