Got spanked

Tech ‘got spanked’ in this week’s primaries. It could be a preview of more to come.

Tech is poised to suffer more electoral defeats this summer in New York, Florida and elsewhere, where industry detractors are frontrunners in their upcoming primaries.

By Christine Mui, Dustin Gardiner, Madison Fernandez and Kimberly Leonard

Silicon Valley’s political brand can’t stop taking a beating.

This week, Californians dealt a series of blows to candidates with backing from the tech industry or roots in it — and similar anti-tech headwinds are building up ahead of contests across the country.

Less than half an hour after polls closed in the Golden State, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan conceded the governor’s race, becoming the most prominent casualty for tech on primary night. The former startup executive rallied Silicon Valley donors to pour tens of millions of dollars into his failed bid, only to land in the low single digits.

Tech challengers are also stumbling in congressional races in the tech-heavy Bay Area. Entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal conceded early Wednesday after coming nowhere close to advancing against Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna, a progressive who’s championed a proposed tax on California billionaires. And wealthy venture capitalist Eric Jones could get boxed out of his challenge to Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson in his Napa County district, as Jones is pulling in at a close third.

“This is a preview of what’s coming in 2026, and it’s a preview of what’s coming in 2028,” Rob Flaherty, a Democratic strategist who was deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, told POLITICO. “Association with tech money is increasingly going to become a problem.”

The anti-tech mood is rising across the U.S., with the California results just the latest demonstration of populist opposition. Voters are angry about water and energy-hungry data centers in their communities, and parents are concerned that chatbots are harming their children. Tech is poised to suffer more electoral defeats this summer in New York, Florida and elsewhere, where detractors challenging the industry are frontrunners in their upcoming primaries.

“People are looking for these avenues to push back on tech,” said Irene Kao, director of Courage California, a progressive advocacy group. “Voters at the end of the day really want to see candidates who reflect who they are. They want candidates who feel less out of touch.”

The losses Tuesday, especially among candidates with tech backgrounds, reflect a level of political naiveté among industry megadonors who’ve only recently sought to emerge as kingmakers in state politics or congressional races, according to a prominent Silicon Valley Democratic fundraiser who was granted anonymity to speak frankly.

“The tech guys that think they know politics, those are the ones that got spanked,” the fundraiser said. “These guys are wannabes, the ones that don’t appreciate that political science is actually a science.”

But it wasn’t just in California. In Iowa, Republican businessman Zach Lahn pulled off a rare victory against a candidate endorsed by President Donald Trump after calling for a data center moratorium and vowing to tax companies five times more to build them. Contenders elsewhere are similarly taking aim at tech billionaires and the artificial intelligence industry, finding political upside in running against Silicon Valley.

New Yorkers will go to the polls June 23 to decide who will replace Manhattan Rep. Jerry Nadler in a race where dueling AI interests have elevated Assemblymember Alex Bores into a symbol of the fight over how AI should be regulated.

Bores, an alum-turned-critic of data analytics company Palantir, was the first target of a super PAC in the Leading the Future super PAC network, funded by donors like OpenAI President Greg Brockman and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He drew the ire of the PAC for his sponsorship of New York’s RAISE Act, one of the country’s landmark AI safety regulations.

But Bores’ allies are betting that the $4 million spent against him from LTF’s Think Big super PAC will backfire. Much of his campaign has centered around AI regulation efforts, leading to a wide range of support — from progressives to PACs with links to Anthropic, which has taken a friendlier stance to AI guardrails. Pro-Bores PACs, some of which are backed by rival industry forces, have for weeks outspent Think Big in the race, and LTF has accused Bores of being a hypocrite over that support.

Bores’ campaign is casting Think Big as the boogeyman in the final weeks.

Bores has treated the super PAC like a candidate would target a fellow opponent. He recently challenged a representative from Think Big to a debate, and made the organization the main subject of an ad released this week. “I am the AI super PAC ... designed to destroy Alex Bores, because Bores is a threat to our power,” a voice posing as the super PAC says in the ad. “Alex Bores must be taught no one can stop us.”

In Florida, Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican frontrunner to be the next governor of Florida, has made AI the top issue on which he’s willing to part ways with Trump. While Trump has pushed for a national framework governing AI, Donalds said this week for the first time that he disagreed with Trump on AI policy, arguing states should be allowed to set regulations and pledging to tackle the issue during his first year as governor.

It was a stunning turnaround for Donalds. Not only has he received millions of dollars in backing from the AI industry, he’s been endorsed by Trump in his August primary.

The remarks — and the willingness of GOP politicians in Florida to buck Trump on a major issue — underscore bubbling tensions in the electorate. AI has become a major target in red-state Florida, where GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis frequently attacks the technology as dangerous for minors.

Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier piled on in recent days, launching a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman that alleges ChatGPT is harmful and doesn’t adequately warn the public of its risks.

“There has to be oversight,” Uthmeier said Tuesday during an unrelated press conference in Miami, when asked about his approach to AI. “There has to be regulation. These are some of the smartest people in the world. ChatGPT knows how to analyze and manage data, I think better than most. They can certainly step in and protect our kids.”

DeSantis has also raised concerns about how data centers, the sprawling facilities that power AI computation, might increase utility bills and sounded the alarm about AI rendering some jobs obsolete.

Those alarms are ringing out across the U.S. In the Los Angeles County city of Monterey Park, residents are set to overwhelmingly approve California’s first-ever measure to ban data centers.

Tech money is flowing to both sides of many of these fights at the ballot box. Leading the Future pledged to spend around $5 million helping Donalds’ candidacy. While the network is spending against Bores, its rival political group Public First has received $20 million from Anthropic and is supporting the assemblymember, along with another super PAC with $3.5 million from crypto titan and San Francisco billionaire Chris Larsen.

But the biggest setbacks have come in races where candidates were defined by their ties to the tech industry.

In San Francisco’s race for Nancy Pelosi’s seat, centimillionaire and former tech engineer Saikat Chakrabarti put $10 million of his own money into a campaign that took repeated shots at tech billionaires for spending to oppose him. But he was squeezed out by a Pelosi-endorsed rival who accused him of using his tech riches to buy the election.

“You’re seeing candidates who are not kind of hand-picked by tech do a little bit better,” said Cooper Teboe, a Silicon Valley donor adviser who is working with Khanna and Jones. “The issue for both Ethan and Mahan is that they were viewed as the guys — the guys in the pocket of the tech billionaires.”

Leading the Future found success backing incumbents, rather than political newcomers from the industry. The group emerged from Tuesday’s congressional primaries with a perfect 6-0 record, with victories including Democratic Reps. Rob Menendez (N.J.) and Jimmy Panetta (Calif.) and Republican Jay Obernolte (Calif.).

Its remaining wins came in open-seat races, where Republican primary winners Aaron Flint and Kurt Alme in Montana as well as Chris McGowan in Iowa, whose race was uncontested, all carried Trump’s endorsement.

In California, new super PACs funded by Larsen and Big Tech companies are proving more effective during their debut in state legislative contests. They spent millions to take out a handful of progressive, labor-backed Democratic candidates and boost their more moderate opponents.

But where the PACs have been successful, it has hardly come from explicitly embracing their corporate donors. Ads from groups like California Leads, which has $10 million from Google and Meta, do not mention tech, instead focusing on bread-and-butter issues or featuring testimonials from local political leaders.

While bolstered by industry dollars, the difference is “you’re seeing people who have a sense of political acumen and political understanding of what the average person believes in and exists outside of the bubble of just very wealthy people,” said Teboe.

Silicon Valley donors are showing no signs of letting up, with those who backed losing candidates in California saying their foray into state politics is just beginning. Venture capitalist Garry Tan, an ardent supporter of Mahan and Agarwal, said he was undeterred by headwinds this cycle.

“For me, it doesn’t matter if we have to be like water,” he told POLITICO. “Water is just constant and unending, it will wear down rock. It might take decades — we need to measure our plans in centuries here.”