Political action committees tied to the artificial intelligence industry have spent at least $2 million in the waning days of North Carolina’s 2026 primary elections to try to influence two key races, on either side of the aisle. The spending comes as an AI boom continues reshaping the U.S. economy and many individual industries, as well as raising questions about surveillance and other ethical issues.
Early voting ends this week, and Election Day is Tuesday. In the meantime, local voters are being bombarded by ads on their televisions, radios, computer screens and phones — particularly for the Democratic primary in the Triangle-area 4th Congressional district, and the Republican primary for the 1st Congressional District in northeastern North Carolina.
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Making a late entry into the ad blitz are AI-backed PACs, supporting Democratic U.S. Rep. Valerie Foushee in the 4th district and Republican candidate Laurie Buckhout in the 1st district.
The Jobs and Democracy political action committee, which claims on its website to support “sensible AI regulation,” has spent $1.6 million supporting Foushee in her Democratic primary against Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam. It’s an affiliated PAC of a larger group, Public First, which is backed by $20 million from Anthropic, the AI company that runs the Claude tool. The Jobs and Democracy PAC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Donald Trump on Friday ordered all federal agencies to phase out the use of Anthropic technology following a dispute over how its AI products could be used by the Pentagon. The federal government sought for Anthropic to allow unrestricted military use of the Claude tool, a request the company resisted.
Foushee sits on the U.S. House of Representatives’ Bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Task Force and co-chairs the Democratic Commission on AI and Innovation Economy. She has also led efforts to connect Triangle-area tech leaders and academics with national experts to discuss AI ethics and regulation, WRAL reported in 2024. On Friday, Foushee announced a plan to introduce federal legislation that would create AI research institutes at Historical Black Colleges and Universities.
Allam, who’s backed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says Foushee is too friendly to corporate interests, including the AI industry. Sanders, I-Vermont, said at a Durham rally that Allam will “take on billionaires ... who think they can buy American democracy."
Political action committees aren’t allowed to coordinate with campaigns, and Foushee says the support from the AI groups is out of her control. She has shot back at that line of criticism, noting that Allam’s campaign is also backed by big ad buys from several large PACs, which are themselves funded by billionaires.
“So, why am I investigating Big Tech for the historic surge of layoffs over the last year?” Foushee said in a recent video. “And why is this PAC running ads against me funded by billionaires? My biggest donors are unions. The hard-working people of North Carolina.”
In response, Allam accused Foushee of promoting a “false equivalency.” She said leaders in the AI industry supported the presidential claim of Donald Trump, who Foushee claims in ads to be fighting against. “You can't claim to be fighting Trump when your campaign is bankrolled by the very same donors who put him in office,” Allam said in a statement to WRAL.
In the 1st District primary, Buckhout faces four other Republicans also seeking the party’s nomination to take on Democratic U.S. Rep. Don Davis in November. Buckhout last year briefly served as the U.S. Department of Defense’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. She’s also worked as a defense contracting consultant, following her retirement as a colonel in the U.S. Army.
Leading the Future, which is partially funded by OpenAI President and Co-founder Greg Brockman, is spending $500,000 through an affiliated group called American Mission to help Buckhout in her crowded GOP primary.
Competition abroad, skepticism at home
States including North Carolina have been working for years to lure AI data centers onto available land, chasing the massive boosts to local property taxes that the multimillion-dollar centers can provide. At the same time, developers are increasingly running into hostility in communities where they hope to build AI data centers.
The centers house thousands of servers that run nonstop, generating heat that must be cooled and consuming electricity at a rate that can strain a power grid, raising questions about their effect on local water and power rates. Last year the Republican-led state legislature passed a new law, over Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s veto, to increase residential power bills in order to lower the bills for large industrial customers such as data centers.
In response to the Jobs and Democracy PAC’s support of Foushee, Allam held a Feb. 21 campaign event in Apex — not far from where developers are proposing a 250-megawatt data center in the New Hill community in Wake County. Allam said she stands with residents who oppose the project and vowed to never accept money from the AI lobby.
“The oligarchs and out-of-state development companies who are proposing to build an AI data center in our community call it construction — but we see right through it,” Allam said. “We know its destruction of jobs, our environment and our communities themselves.”
Foushee posted a video to social media Wednesday announcing that she opposes the proposed data center in New Hill. “Plainly, I don’t support a new data center in the heart of our district,” she said.
Foushee added that she has “demanded an investigation from the Department of Commerce into whether administration [of Republican President Donald Trump] is directly profiting from the data center boom due to a lack of guardrails.”
In the 1st Congressional District, Republican candidate Asa Buck is running an online ad attacking Buckhout for benefitting from Leading the Future’s support. The group is also backing Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr. in an Illinois congressional race, which Buck says is “more evidence that you can’t trust Laurie Buckhout." The ad also alleges that Buckhout is crossing Trump by benefitting from the group’s support, citing an October NBC News report that the White House was irked by the PAC’s creation.
In a statement to WRAL, Buck’s campaign alleges that candidates who benefit from Leading the Future’s ads “will support federal control of AI mandates, taking the power away from state and local governments.” Trump signed an executive order in December banning states from passing many new types of regulation on AI companies, despite bipartisan opposition to that idea.
Eric Pahls, Buckhout’s her campaign spokesman, disputed that claim, saying Buckhout “wasn’t beholden to anyone but her country in the military and she will be beholden only to Eastern North Carolina in Congress.” At the same time, Buckhout wants to help U.S.-based AI companies make technological advancements faster than Chinese companies, Pahls said.
“We need to slash the regulations strangling American innovation and unleash American energy to power our tech sector. Under my watch, America will dominate AI, not China,” Buckhout said in a statement provided by Pahls.
Leading the Future didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
WRAL asked the other Republican candidates seeking the Republican nomination in the 1st district about Leading the Future’s support for Buckhout and involvement in the race. State Sen. Bobby Hanig and Lenoir County Commissioner Eric Rouse didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Ashley-Nicole Russell, a family law attorney who is also running for the GOP nomination in the district, told WRAL that AI can boost the district’s economy.
“Artificial intelligence is rapidly shaping the future of our economy, and it presents both significant opportunities and important responsibilities,” Russell said in a statement. “When we approach AI with a focus on innovation, it can help strengthen District 1 businesses, support workers, and keep our state and country competitive on the global stage.”