The Battle over AI comes to a North Seattle Legislature Race

The intra-party battle for a state House seat in Seattle’s reliably left 46th LD features some standard-fare, red-meat (or in this district, blue-meat) campaign issues — Trump-proofing Washington, schools, income inequality, affordable childcare. But thanks to two strong challengers for seven-term Rep. Gerry Pollet’s seat, AI regulations have become a spicy new ingredient and an interesting battleground for the fundraising race.

That spice came with a literal bag of popcorn and an entertaining story we’ve heard from multiple parties. The corn was given to Pollet by challenger Will Dreher, who is campaigning as an AI-regulator-to-be, as they sat down for an endorsement interview at The Stranger with another challenger, urbanist activist Ron Davis, whose progressive candidacy is premised on getting the Stranger nod.

Pollet seems likely to emerge based on name recognition alone, so Dreher had his work cut out for him. He told Pollet to sit back and watch as he and Davis pummelled each other in front of the undoubtedly delighted Stranger editorial board.

Which gets us to AI. Dreher emerged out of nowhere in April with a platform spotlighting the WA legislature’s anemic response to AI, which he’s right about. Dreher’s bio includes being top of his class at Harvard Law and a federal prosecutor of Jan. 6 rioters. He’s now at a white-shoe law firm handling a class action vs AI alleging copyright violations, and frames AI as an existential threat to the environment (via power-gobbling data centers), jobs and basic human decency (i.e. deepfake nude factories).

Davis is a tech guy who has become a fixture in Seattle politics (he narrowly lost a 2023 city council race) as an urbanist with a sharp-elbowed, populist-on-the-streets vibe. He’s hoping the race hinges on housing and transit issues — two issues in his wheelhouse. But when Dreher popped up, he added a platform plank on AI regs and an attack line on Dreher’s fundraising.

Dreher has raised nearly $260K, an eye-popping figure that makes him among the best-funded House candidates so far. A vast percentage of the donations are from out of state. What’s really interesting is that about $100K of that haul comes from donors who work at AI companies or in the AI supply chain. Davis’ supporters have latched onto the carpet-bagger line of attack and have cast doubt on Dreher’s AI regulator-to-be cred.

But there’s an interesting backstory. On April 28, Eric Neyman, a researcher-writer with a following in the ethical AI community, kicked Dreher max donations for the primary and general election after they talked. Neyman had already endorsed congressional candidates with an AI-reformer platform. Neyman’s nod uncorked about 50 donations within a week from folks working at Anthropic, OpenAI and firms in the AI food chain. Then on May 21, Neyman gave Dreher’s platform a specific shout-out, which Dreher responded to. That uncorked about 30 more contributions, many of them at the max level.

It’s absurdly possible that it’s all an elaborate ruse and Dreher is a Manchurian candidate for AI, but we got none of those vibes. We’ll know for sure if the Leading the Future SuperPAC, OpenAI’s electioneering fund, drops a negative independent expenditure on Dreher, or the Public First SuperPAC, which supports state regs, supports him. He notes that Davis’s AI platform arrived only after Pope Leo wrote a 42,000-word warning about the existential threat. “If you’ve been beaten to the punch on tech regulations by the Pope, well…” he said.

Worth noting: Pollet hasn’t had a meaningful challenger since first winning in 2012, even as redistricting shifted the 46th LD away from suburban Kenmore and down into more progressive North Seattle neighborhoods. He cashed in chits and got establishment Democratic endorsements, including Gov. Bob Ferguson and U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Seattle legislators and labor — hence the thinking he’s safe until after the primary. The 46th LD endorsement was split.

A version of this story first appeared on the Washington Observer website.
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