Rep. Valerie Foushee Defeats a Primary Challenge From the Left With Help of an AI Money Boost

Rep. Valerie Foushee is projected to win the Democratic nomination in North Carolina’s deep blue 4th District after a tough battle against a more progressive challenger that tested the direction of the state’s Democratic Party.

The state’s intense gerrymandering over the years has made Democratic districts bluer.

Foushee defeated Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam by just 1,200 votes in a race marked by robust outside spending for both candidates, including a big boost for Foushee from the artificial intelligence industry. Allam unsuccessfully challenged her in 2022.

The slim margin of victory allowed the Allam campaign to ask for a recount, but she conceded the win to Foushee on Wednesday.

“The AI lobby just bought its first seat in Congress,” she wrote in a statement. “But despite their millions in last-minute spending, corporate lobbies were only barely able to eke out a win — because of the movement this campaign built.”

While unsuccessful, she said her campaign “sounded the alarm for future Democratic primaries throughout this cycle.”

“While we may not have won this race, the establishment should stay on watch.”

The primary was also a litmus test for how voters feel about AI, said Darrell West, an AI researcher and fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Spending by the AI company Anthropic’s PAC, Jobs and Democracy, escalated this primary to the most expensive one in state history, NC Newsline reported. Foushee’s campaign coffers were boosted last week by an outpouring of money from the PAC.

The PAC gave about $1.6 million in support of Foushee. The candidate reported raising just more than $550,000 by Feb. 11, per Federal Election Commission reports.

“To have an outside group come in and spend a million and a half dollars supporting you — that’s a huge help,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at Open Secrets.

Foushee also received $600,000 from Article One, a PAC not associated with AI.

Foushee said before the primary that her contributions do not influence her work in Congress.

“I respect our primary system, but I am grateful my constituents have rejected the baseless attacks from out-of-state groups that my family and I have had to endure,” she said Wednesday night. “My priorities are to stop Trump’s attacks on our democracy, regulate AI, overturn Citizens United, establish a Green New Deal, ensure Medicare for All, pass legislation to block arms sales to Israel, and lower the cost of groceries, housing, and education. Nothing will ever change that.”

Allam ran on an anti-corporate message. She did not take any money from corporate-funded super PACS, although she did receive significant sums from progressive PACs like Leaders We Deserve and Justice Democrats.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Allam targeted the AI industry and a data center being proposed in the 4th District. She stumped with Sen. Bernie Sanders in Durham, where he trumpeted his proposed moratorium on data centers, which Allam supports. Her last ad of the cycle focused on Iran and called out Foushee for receiving money from a PAC associated with Anthropic, which the U.S. military used in its attack on Iran.

Allam held an event in late February to oppose plans for an AI data center in Apex, North Carolina, and to call out Foushee’s corporate AI backers.

“They’re so concerned with cleaning up their image that they’ve gotten involved in our congressional race,” she said at the time.

Foushee does not support the Apex data center but has said local leaders should control that decision.

This isn’t the first time Foushee’s outside contributions carried baggage. When she faced Allam in 2022, some Democrats criticized her for accepting money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. The group poured $433,000 — more than half of the campaign’s total fundraising — into her campaign, making it the most expensive Democratic congressional primary in state history. Foushee has sworn off AIPAC money since then.

But AI money is unlikely to be as toxic as AIPAC money within the Democratic Party, said Chris Cooper, a political science professor and elections watcher in North Carolina.

“Not that everybody is loving AI these days, but it doesn’t carry the same negative connotation that AIPAC money does in, at least, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party,” Cooper said.

Foushee will face Mahesh Ganorkar, a Republican, and Guy Meilleur, a libertarian, in the general election in November.

The outside spending in the primary race was just “a precursor to what we’re going to see later in the year,” said Glavin at Open Secrets.

“As we go into the summer and the fall, this is just the tip of the iceberg, especially with these AI groups,” Glavin said. “It’s the tip of the iceberg of what we’re going to see later this year, where we can expect to see hundreds of millions of dollars spent by these groups.”