First AIPAC, Now AI PACs
The artificial intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrency industries are starting to pour money into congressional races in Chicago.
The news of AI and crypto super PAC spending comes after the Prospect and Drop Site News reported that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was spending millions on four Chicago races through shady shell PACs with innocuous names like “Elect Chicago Women” and “Affordable Chicago Now.”
The crypto industry has already been a major player in American politics, spending hundreds of millions during the 2024 election cycle to elect pro-industry politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Now, pro-AI groups are hoping to elect legislators who will be sympathetic to their plans to create a national framework for AI regulation and enable the construction of more data centers, which are needed to power big AI models.
In Chicagoland, the industry found those sympathetic candidates in Jesse Jackson Jr., son of the recently deceased former progressive presidential candidate, who is hoping to regain his old seat in the Second Congressional District, and Melissa Bean, running for her old seat in the Eighth District. Jackson is hoping to make a comeback after he was investigated for misuse of campaign funds in 2012, resigned from the seat, pled guilty, and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. After leaving her seat, Bean spent over a decade in the banking world and is no stranger to the role of big money in politics.
In Jackson’s case, the AI PAC money is going up directly against AIPAC, which has driven donors to Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller, while also spending big money through Affordable Chicago Now on pro-Miller ads.
As of February 19, a PAC called Think Big has spent over $1 million on both Jackson and Bean. Think Big is the Democratic affiliate of the super PAC Leading the Future, which says it and its associates have raised $125 million in commitments and have $70 million in cash on hand. Leading the Future is funded by major tech donors, including Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz (of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz) and Greg and Anna Brockman. Greg Brockman is the co-founder and president of OpenAI; in 2024, alongside his wife Anna, he gave $25 million to pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc.
Pro-AI groups are hoping to elect legislators who will be sympathetic to their plans to create a national framework for AI regulation.
“It is critical that we identify and support lawmakers who recognize the urgency of this moment and the responsibility policymakers have to enact a national regulatory framework that ensures the United States remains the global leader in AI innovation, wins the race against China and protects the safety of kids, users and communities,” said Leading the Future co-strategists Zac Moffatt and Josh Vlasto in a statement to the Prospect. “As more candidates emerge to champion policies that harness the economic benefits of AI and reject attempts to hinder American innovation, Leading the Future will stand alongside them as a committed supporter.”
As Moffatt and Vlasto said in their statement, one of Leading the Future’s main goals is to establish a “national regulatory framework” for AI, which one suspects may be code for less regulation. In June 2025, lawmakers put a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill that would ban states from making their own AI regulations for a decade. The provision never made it into the final version of the bill, but it remains a priority for many pro-AI politicians and donors.
The states have emerged as leaders in AI regulation, moving to create safeguards against some of the technology’s most dangerous features, while the federal government doesn’t. States including California, Minnesota, and Texas have passed laws that ban or restrict the use of deepfakes in political messaging. Tennessee’s ELVIS Act gives musical artists protections from their voices being misused by AI. Forty-five states have enacted laws that criminalize AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
Data centers have also emerged as a crucial and contentious issue for the AI industry. Though Leading the Future doesn’t mention data centers as one of their core concerns, the issue is relevant in Chicagoland. In Illinois, there are 164 operational data centers and another 81 planned. These centers aren’t all used for AI, but the skyrocketing growth of the industry has increased the need for data centers and brought them into the national conversation. Some Chicagoland residents complain that the noise pollution from data centers is constant, and their utility bills have gone up.
This month, two Illinois state lawmakers introduced the POWER Act in an attempt to regulate new data centers. The act prohibits data centers from shifting energy costs onto residents, requiring the centers to fully fund their own power costs. If passed, the bill would also require that centers report their water usage and undergo environmental assessments.
Jackson spokesperson John Digles tried to justify the Leading the Future support as part of the candidate’s future agenda in Congress. “The AI economy is here. Jesse Jackson Jr. believes that underserved communities must not miss another economic shift. He knows many have been left behind too many times. In this campaign, there are voices who claim to be progressive, yet promote regressive fear that will further marginalize those in the Second Congressional District. AI technologies must be developed and regulated to meet ALL of their needs,” he said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the crypto industry is diving back into politics. Fairshake, the crypto super PAC that is reportedly entering two Illinois races, made its debut during the 2024 election, backing both Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress. Fairshake is backed by Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the country’s largest crypto exchange, Coinbase.
During that election cycle, Fairshake spent over $40 million to support incumbents who served on the House Financial Services and Agriculture Committees, which moved forward industry-favored crypto legislation. Fairshake also spent millions to oppose former California Rep. Katie Porter’s 2024 campaign for Senate; she lost that primary.
The electoral efforts of Leading the Future seem to be deeply informed by Fairshake’s strategies during the 2024 cycle. Vlasto, co-strategist at Leading the Future, helped advise Fairshake two years ago, and is now modeling his AI effort on Fairshake’s success. (Vlasto is also the former press secretary for Sen. Chuck Schumer.)
Fairshake is planning to spend at least $1 million against both La Shawn Ford, who is running in Illinois’s Seventh Congressional District, and Robert Peters, the candidate in the Second District, Politico first reported. Peters helped advance state-level crypto regulations during his time as a state senator, earning himself an “F” grade from the advocacy organization Stand With Crypto.
It remains to be seen if Fairshake will also spend in support of any of the Chicagoland candidates. They very well may; many of the candidates have signaled an openness to working with the crypto industry. Bean and Jackson have “A” grades from Stand With Crypto. Bean has a crypto section on the policy section of her campaign page, and pledges to “promote U.S.-based blockchain innovation” in office.
The crypto industry could also look to the Ninth Congressional District, where leading candidates Laura Fine and Daniel Biss also have “A” grades from Stand With Crypto. Fine has benefited from support from Elect Chicago Women, as has Bean. (Fine admitted at a forum on Thursday night that she has benefited from AIPAC donors and donors who gave to Donald Trump.)
Likewise, in the Seventh Congressional District, Chicago City Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who is benefiting from direct support from AIPAC’s designated PAC United Democracy Fund, promises to “encourage responsible investment through traditional and blockchain-based assets.”
At a press conference on Monday, Peters presented his approach to combating the influx of AIPAC, crypto, and AI money.
“The Second Congressional District is one of the most working-class districts in the entire city. Forty to fifty percent of people are on Medicaid. Forty thousand people are at the risk of losing their SNAP benefits,” Peters said. Even if some voters in IL-02 have no opinion on Israel, AI regulation, or crypto, the candidates whose actions will help dictate their futures are staking their careers on these topics.
In a follow-up, Peters told the Prospect that dark money represents “a national crisis that is eroding trust in our politics. That’s true for AIPAC and its hard-line pro-Israel position, and it’s true for these AI and crypto super PACs putting a huge amount of economic power into the hands of a very small number of people. Voters everywhere—including in IL-02—are ready to reject this kind of corrupt politics.”
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