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“Alex Bores. Wrong on A.I. Wrong for Congress,” one attack ad said.

“Hypocrite,” read another. “Liar,” said one more.

For months, district voters have received a steady barrage of mail, texts, and television spots trained at Mr. Bores, who first joined the State Assembly in 2023 and whose district on the East Side lies inside the congressional district. These messages are part of a multimillion-dollar assault on his candidacy from a super PAC, Leading the Future.

Close to $75 million has flowed to the group from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, and Greg Brockman, a co-founder of OpenAI. So far, $6.2 million has been spent against Mr. Bores, according to federal filings.

OpenAI’s largest competitor, Anthropic, has argued for more government oversight and a more cautious approach to the development of new A.I. tools. It has backed Mr. Bores from the start, with employees donating at least $186,000 to his campaign.

Far more has flowed to outside groups supporting him. Four super PACs — all with ties to Anthropic or its ideological allies — have spent about $6.5 million defending Mr. Bores or attacking his opponents, according to federal filings.

Chris Larsen, a billionaire crypto investor, spent $3.5 million to help Mr. Bores “when he learned that OpenAI was deliberately targeting” Mr. Bores’s campaign, according to Alex Tourk, a spokesman for Mr. Larsen.

All that money and attention to Mr. Bores has cast a shadow over the race to represent the 12th District, which includes some of New York’s wealthiest neighborhoods: the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, and Midtown Manhattan. Many of his rivals are struggling to compete for attention amid the battle of tech behemoths that has Mr. Bores in the middle.

“I had never heard of him until I saw the ads attacking him,” said Michael Paluszek, a 40-year resident of Stuyvesant Town.

Mr. Paluszek shifted his support from another candidate once he learned more about Mr. Bores, and he plans to volunteer and “own the corner of East 14th Street and Avenue A,” at the district’s southernmost reaches.

“That’s going to be my corner,” he said. “I’m going to compete.”

Mr. Bores said that his interest in A.I. stemmed from his experience working at these companies and his understanding of how they work. He said he had already heard from members of Congress who were excited to work on the issue if he is elected, and he had a stock reply for them: Don’t wait for him.

“I’m not going to be there for eight months,” he said. “Take it. I have no pride of ownership.”

His expertise on the subject will be an asset for Democrats, he said. Despite the assertions of his opponents, he said, his focus as a legislator has never been on giving one company an advantage over another. Sometimes he reads the inflammatory texts the PACs have sent and wonders how they could possibly be ascribed to him.

“A lot of people that come to this from the A.I. safety angle or A.I. regulatory angle, we were the first people to say: ‘Hey, this is really powerful and that’s why we think there needs to be regulation, but it can also be used for good,’” he said.

Mr. Bores did not set out to be an A.I. expert. As a student at Cornell University, Mr. Bores wanted to become a lawyer focused on international trade and labor rights. That remained his goal as he excelled at debate, protested Nike’s use of sweatshops, and won an elected seat on the university’s board of trustees. Friends described Mr. Bores as an intensely focused striver.

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Assemblyman Alex Bores represents a district on Manhattan’s East Side that lies in the 12th Congressional District, where he is running to succeed Representative Jerrold Nadler. Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times

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