Carlos De La Cruz has never held elected office. He is a retired Air Force veteran who, until recently, owned a kickboxing gym in San Antonio. He is running for Congress in Texas's 35th District, a seat the Texas Legislature redrew in 2025 to make it winnable for a Republican.

His campaign has raised about $1.05 million so far.

Outside groups have spent about $2.35 million to elect him.

Those numbers are not a typo, and they are not hard to look up. They come straight from the Federal Election Commission's independent expenditure records. Here is where the outside money came from.

Two industries. Two-point-one million dollars. One freshman candidate who will owe them both.

"Defending Our Values" is an AI super PAC

You would not know that from the name. That's the point.

The Texas Tribune dug into this in April and found that AI-linked super PACs had put more than $2.8 million behind at least seven Texas congressional candidates — and that the groups had "otherwise shrouded their connections to the industry, going by generic-sounding names such as Jobs and Democracy PAC and Defending Our Values PAC, and running ads... that do not mention the technology."

The Tribune explained exactly why the ads stay quiet: polls show a majority of voters are skeptical of AI and don't want data centers in their communities.

Defending Our Values PAC is aligned with Public First Action, a nonprofit backed by the AI company Anthropic, which self-reported a $20 million donation to it. Because Public First Action is a nonprofit, it doesn't have to say where the rest of its money comes from.

But its super PAC does. FEC records for Defending Our Values show that almost every dollar it has raised this cycle came from Public First Action — more than $5.2 million. The rest of its top donors are AI employees writing personal checks: $100,000 from a San Francisco donor who lists Anthropic as his employer, $50,000 from one who lists Meta Superintelligence Labs.

When the Tribune published in April, Defending Our Values had spent "almost $480,000" on De La Cruz ahead of the March primary. By the end of June that number had tripled, to nearly $1.5 million.

It is worth being precise about which side of the industry this is. The AI money in these races comes from two rival networks, and the Tribune sorts them under separate headings. Leading the Future, funded by OpenAI's president and Palantir's co-founder, is spending to elect candidates who want fewer rules. Public First Action is the other one — the Tribune calls it a "bipartisan" group that "focuses on AI safety and transparency and favors stronger safeguards for the industry," and files Defending Our Values under "The pro-regulation PACs." Both are the AI industry's money. Neither asked anyone in TX-35 which one they'd prefer buying their congressman's ads.

"Defend American Jobs" is Coinbase and Ripple

Same trick, different industry.

Defend American Jobs is an arm of Fairshake, the crypto industry's political operation. Its FEC filings show its money arriving in $1 million to $9 million chunks from Fairshake itself, plus $250,000 direct from Ripple Labs and $100,000 from AH Capital Management — a check the filing itself breaks out as $50,000 apiece from venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz.

And Fairshake's own donors are Coinbase, Ripple Labs, AH Capital Management, Andreessen and Horowitz — in eight-figure amounts.

This is the same machine that spent $12 million making Barry Moore the Republican Senate nominee in Alabama — the crypto industry's single largest bet of the 2026 cycle. In Texas's 35th District it settled for $616,000.

His website is the tell

Here's the thing about a "generic-sounding name" strategy: the ads may not mention AI, but the candidate's own platform does.

De La Cruz's campaign site says artificial intelligence "could transform medicine, manufacturing, and American competitiveness," promises to keep America ahead of China in the AI race, and says he'd power it with Texas energy. On crypto, he wants "clear, commonsense rules that protect consumers and keep innovation here at home."

The Tribune noted the same thing — that his site backs AI and crypto development, "including strengthening export controls on semiconductors, strengthening data protection and security at AI labs and investing in energy infrastructure."

That is not an accident, and the people who study this money don't pretend it is.

"They're following signals, and they are investing in these elections because they are expecting a return on that investment." — Tiffany Muller, End Citizens United

"The mere fact that the industry spent a bunch of money on the election, and will presumably spend a bunch of money on any future election, means that policymakers across the board will probably listen to what they have to say at a minimum, and may be afraid of making them angry by going against them." — Ian Vandewalker, Brennan Center for Justice

Brian Roberts, a government professor at UT Austin, is the dissenter in the Tribune's piece: he thinks these PACs back candidates who already agree with them rather than buying anybody's vote, and adds that a freshman may not have much say either way. He describes the transaction the same way regardless: "The strategy is to elect kindred spirits."

Why this matters in San Antonio specifically

Texas is where the data centers are going. The Tribune's piece notes the state is seeing "an explosion of power and water-guzzling data centers popping up across the state," with state and local officials fighting over whether to regulate them at all, and the fight headed for the 2027 legislative session.

Texans are already living with the consequences. Greg Abbott spent years branding Texas the "epicenter of AI development" while his state handed out a data center sales tax exemption the Legislature wrote in 2013 and expanded in 2015 — one the Comptroller's office now projects will cost roughly $3.3 billion in the 2028–29 budget cycle. Then, in an election year, he sent a letter demanding an audit of how much power and water they use and asked for credit as the one protecting us from them.

Into that fight, both wings of the industry are now installing members of Congress. Oklahoma's Kevin Hern got $850,000 from the anti-regulation network in a race he was already going to win, while four Oklahoma cities paused data center construction. De La Cruz got nearly twice that from the other one, in a district that hasn't elected him yet.

And his energy plank is the industry's energy plank: "Texas powers America, and I will fight to unleash our state's energy potential," plus rolling back environmental regulations. When data centers drive up what families pay for electricity — which is the fight now playing out in state after state — this is the seat that would be voting on it.

The part nobody voted for

There's one more line in the FEC file worth sitting with. A group called Protect and Serve PAC spent $12,285 against De La Cruz in the May runoff.

Twelve thousand dollars against. Two-point-three million for. That's the whole shape of this race: a first-time candidate carried across the finish line by industries most of his future constituents have never been asked about.

De La Cruz faces Democrat Johnny Garcia in November. If he wins, the people who spent $2.1 million on him will know exactly where to find him. Everybody else in TX-35 will have to get in line.

Source

AI super PAC money floods Texas congressional races — Olivia Borgula, The Texas Tribune, April 1, 2026. Photo: Shuran Huang for The Texas Tribune. Spending totals independently verified against FEC filings through June 30, 2026.