After being one of the first and strongest supporters of Dean Phillips’ congressional campaigns, End Citizens United released the following statement from Communications Director Jonas Edwards-Jenks blasting his newfound love of big money super PACs and billionaire donors:
“We were proud to be one of the first and early supporters of Dean Phillips’ congressional runs, where he made taking on the corrosive influence of big money in politics a central theme of his campaigns. So it’s a shame for him to now be taking orders from his big money super PAC and billionaire donors. What a disgrace to see how far he’s fallen.”
Read more:
NY Magazine: Dean Phillips Met Sam Altman, Then Got Awfully Interested in AI
David Freedlander
1/18/24
-
In recent days, the Phillips campaign has been derailed by the revelation that he deleted parts of his website devoted to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at the behest of Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire who has given $1 million to Phillips’s super-PAC. Ackman, who has been in the news in recent weeks for his efforts to remove Claudine Gay as president of Harvard, all but bragged about his ability to dictate what policies Phillips pushes, writing on X that the three-term congressman “didn’t understand what DEI was when that was made part of his website” and that “he is getting educated as we speak. Let’s listen to what he has to say after he gets educated.”
-
And now some critics of Phillips see his newfound interest in AI also coming from his campaign donors. He hadn’t been seen as much of a warrior on the issue of artificial intelligence or even particularly interested in ideas around technology during his time in Congress. He is not a member of the Congressional Artificial Intelligence Caucus or the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. He did not discuss the issue when he gave an extended interview launching his campaign on CBS News. But he has assiduously courted the AI industry’s money since declaring his candidacy, hosting a number of phone calls with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whom Phillips called “a source of great counsel, ideation, and perspective.”
-
In November, just as the Biden administration was rolling out an executive order to develop standards for the AI industry, Altman invited Phillips to his home, according to Puck News. Weeks later, a super-PAC led by Matt Krisiloff — an early employee of OpenAI who is said to have once dated Altman — formed to help Phillips and has so far spent over $600,000 to boost him over Biden. Ackman has also donated to the PAC, which now holds $4 million, according to the Washington Post.
-
Not long after, Phillips warned against overregulating AI. During a December presidential forum in New Hampshire dedicated to cryptocurrency, he said, “We should make sure we don’t stifle innovation, that we don’t stifle decentralization when it is thoughtful and supportive of our national interest,” adding, “and that’s true in crypto as it should be in AI.” He also promised to put forward a task force to examine issues around AI and to create a federal “Department of AI.”
-
.Phillips came to Congress as a campaign-finance reformer warning about the role of big money in politics. Yang told me he met Phillips at an event promoting a constitutional amendment that would limit the amount of money campaigns would be able to spend, where, Yang said, Phillips lamented that he was unable to make close relationships with his colleagues in Congress because they were too often at fundraisers in the evenings.
-
But now some of those reformers say Phillips has turned his back on his prior commitments.
-
“When Dean Phillips first ran for Congress and vowed to take on the corrosive influence of big money in politics, we were proud to be one of his earliest backers,” said Jonas Edwards-Jenks, communications director at End Citizens United, which tries to get big money out of politics. “Now he’s done a complete 180 and is twisting himself in pretzels with strange artificial-intelligence proposals to try to secure billionaire backers for his super-PAC. Unfortunately for him, neither these billionaires nor AI can resurrect his flailing campaign.”
###