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mkw5053 parent
Notable that 'Leading the Future' explicitly models itself on Fairshake, which spent $130 million in 2024 and achieved 48 of 51 endorsed candidates winning. At that success rate, $100 million in AI PAC spending could determine 30-40 House seats' positions on AI regulation. For context, the EU's AI Act passed with zero industry PAC spending, while China's AI regulations proceeded without Western-style lobbying.
germinalphrase
“ Fairshake supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet.

Providing blockchain innovators the ability to develop their networks under a clearer regulatory and legal framework is vital if the broader open blockchain economy is to grow to its full potential here in the United States.

Fairshake is a federal independent expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission and supports candidates solely through its independent activities.”

https://www.fairshakepac.com/

guywithahat
From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. I haven't looked at the fairshake data in-depth but I'd guess they just invested in candidates likely to win who aren't vocally opposed to their position.
justin66
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.

Which... does not influence elections?

tzs
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.

A large number of elections for the House of Representatives aren't competitive. The candidate from the incumbent party is going to win no matter how bad they are and no matter how good the other candidates are. No amount of money spent on that election will change things.

However, in a large number of those districts only a small fraction of the voters from that party vote in the primaries or attend the caucuses where that party chooses its candidate. There usually isn't a lot of spending on this. A well funded primary challenger has a very good chance of knocking the incumbent out in the primary or at the caucus.

The threat of this is how Trump keeps the Republicans in the House almost completely under his control. Look at all those Republicans in the House who voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill" and then went home to get completely excoriated by their constituents at town halls for not holding out to get the parts of the bill that were terrible for those constituents removed.

They knew that would be the reaction. But Trump told them that if they didn't vote for it or delayed it to make more changes he'd fund a primary challenger.

digital_sawzall (dead)
kubb
Wow, seats are cheap! We should totally let the people with the most money buy them, that will bring us stability.
bee_rider
I wonder if we could design a system where everybody in the populace chips in a little bit, and the people buy some representatives of our own.
noman-land
I have been thinking the same. Use their own tools against them.
Yeul
Depressingly this is exactly how it went in the 19th century only instead of railway barons we now have tech barons.
itsdrewmiller
“At that rate” - your math only makes sense if their spending is the entire reason those campaigns won. I haven’t dug into the numbers, but if those are house and senate campaigns then it’s a small fraction of total spending.
dkiebd
Who is going to spend a dime in lobbying for or against the EU’s AI Act? The absolutely irrelevant Mistral, which is starved for money and would rather stay on the good side of the European commissioners and oligarchs?

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