An AI safety group hid its election spending through a Latino-focused PAC
Public First Action routed $2m to support Colorado House candidate Manny Rutinel through Latino Victory Fund — and didn’t publicly announce it ahead of Rutinel’s victory
AI safety group Public First Action supported Colorado candidate Manny Rutinel through a $2m transfer to Latino Victory Fund, a Latino-focused super PAC, Transformer has learned.
Latino Victory Fund says it exists to mobilize Latino voters and elect Latinos to office, according to its website. Neither group publicly disclosed the arrangement ahead of Rutinel’s victory last night.
The financial transfer obscured Public First’s spend on Rutinel from voters before election day. While Latino Victory Fund has disclosed spending $1m on ads supporting Manny Rutinel and $1m on ads against his opponent, Shannon Bird, it does not have to disclose Public First’s payment to the PAC until later this month — in effect hiding the ultimate source of the money until then.
Public First Action is the 501(c)(4) arm of the Public First super PAC network, which has generally backed candidates supporting AI safety policies. On Tuesday, it announced it had raised $80m in total funding (though that number cannot be confirmed). So far this cycle it has distributed over $11m to its affiliated super PACs, Public First PAC, Jobs and Democracy PAC, and Defending Our Values PAC.
Obscuring funding this way is not illegal. But it means voters went to the polls without knowing that a group focused on AI policy, not Latino representation, was backing Rutinel. By supporting Rutinel through another PAC, Public First has arguably subverted the purpose of FEC disclosures, which are designed to provide voters with information on who may be trying to influence their vote. Though polling was mixed, Rutinel has been the favorite to win his primary on prediction market Kalshi since December.
In response to a request for comment, Public First spokesperson Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez confirmed the funding transfer. “Public First Action made $2 million in contributions to Latino Victory Fund. Although we cannot speak for Latino Victory Fund, we expect that it will report the contributions on its next report to the FEC. Public First Action did not pay for any particular expenditures, and Latino Victory Fund decided which advertisements to run,” he said.
Latino Victory Fund and Manny Rutinel’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
The Latino Victory Fund PAC is part of a broader Latino Victory organization, co-founded by actress Eva Longoria in 2014. It first endorsed Rutinel in October 2025, though its ads for him did not air until June 9 and 16.
One PAC routing funds through another PAC with its own electoral history is relatively uncommon, says Shanna Ports, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center. But she said it echoes the logic of “pop up PACs,” committees spun up just before an election to exploit gaps in the reporting schedule. “This sounds like it fits into a variety of tactics we’re seeing for groups to conceal where the money came from,” Ports, who was briefed on the tactics but not the names of the specific PACs, said.
Similar tactics recently surfaced in Illinois, where an AIPAC-aligned group routed $5.3m through two PACs described as supporting women candidates and affordability measures, but did not disclose the funding until after the primary. Though Latino Victory Fund was not created for the purposes of obscuring funding, its use by Public First has the same effect. “The pop up super PAC is one method, but this fits that same mold, because it’d be taking into account the reporting deadlines to time when the transfer is happening,” Ports said, “so that it remains hidden until after the election.”
There are other reasons for routing money via an identity-focused group like Latino Victory Fund, too. Ports noted that PACs like Latino Victory Fund can have better “get out the vote” infrastructure — and Latino Victory Fund could probably garner more support, particularly in a district that’s 40% Latino. And last week, the New York Times reported that House Majority PAC, Democrats’ main super PAC, “[has] discouraged the top AI groups from spending in [Rutinel’s] race,” which is expected to become a battleground seat in November’s general election.
Public First has routed money through another PAC before — but was more open about it. Earlier this year it backed Scott Wiener’s House bid through a PAC funded by Garry Tan and other tech figures. The support was disclosed well before election day, however.
Rutinel, like Public First, has ties to the effective altruism and AI safety movements. He was a sponsor of the controversial Colorado AI Act, which has since been repealed and replaced following backlash from industry and the Trump administration. He also sponsored a bill last year — which did not pass — that would have created whistleblower protections for employees at frontier AI firms. When asked how he would like to see artificial intelligence and data centers regulated in a debate last month, he said Coloradans needed a representative who understands the technology and would “stand up to these artificial intelligence companies.”
He also has a long history of working on animal welfare, another key cause area in effective altruism circles. In January, an EA Forum post mentioned Rutinel as someone the community should support due to his work on farmed animal welfare.
Public First’s $2m is not the only AI money in Rutinel’s race. You Can Push Back, which is funded by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and was involved in boosting Alex Bores for NY-12, has spent over $976,000 in support of Rutinel. Rutinel’s campaign has also received over $250,000 in donations from people working at AI companies, with over $160,000 from Anthropic employees.
Latino Victory Fund’s Meta and Google advertisements do not appear to focus on Rutinel’s stance on AI, instead centering on immigration, prescription drug costs and voting rights.
“When Colorado Democrats came together to stop ICE, only one Democrat voted for police cooperation with ICE and raids on schools and hospitals: Shannon Bird,” one Google ad says, referencing a vote from Bird against a state bill that would have prevented local authorities from cooperating with ICE. “Manny Rutinel is the proud son of a Latina immigrant, this fight is personal to him.”
Two layers of hiding here, doing different jobs. The FEC timing gap concealed the source — nobody knew safety-movement money was behind the $2M until after the vote. The ad content concealed the motive: immigration and drug costs, no mention of AI. Voters got the message with no trace of the interest paying for it, from a movement whose core ask is that powerful actors be legible.