Social media didn’t fail Jack Schlossberg. Jack Schlossberg failed social media: A NY-12 Social Media Deep Dive
A deep dive into whether social media matters to get elected and why bad digital strategy can make every advantage look smaller.
For this piece, I pulled X and Instagram posts from January 1, 2026 through June 24, 2026 for the 3 candidates who best explain what happened online in NY-12: Jack Schlossberg, Alex Bores and Micah Lasher. This is a strong sample of the public social race, not a full accounting of every candidate, every paid ad or every offline field program. The image up top is made with AI (sorry).
Key takeaways:
Jack won attention. Micah won votes.
Alex owned the AI conversation. Micah owned New York. Jack owned conflict.
Attention alone doesn’t convert into votes. CTAs are important.
The way campaigns treat creators and digital communities may shape political participation far beyond a single race.
Social media didn’t fail. It revealed the campaign’s strengths and weaknesses.
I want to talk about the very strange lesson political media seems to be taking from Jack Schlossberg’s congressional primary loss, because the coverage keeps circling the same flattened idea: he was online, he had a famous last name, he lost, and therefore social media must be overrated in elections.
Jack’s race is a case study in what happens when a candidate has money, press, legacy, creator access, and a built-in national audience, while the digital strategy never turns all of that attention into a clear enough reason to vote.
Social media did its job. It revealed the gap between attention and conversion.
When I talk to people who work in politics or read about the digital space as it relates to elections, it is easy to reduce the internet to a quick fix for deeper campaign problems. Need young voters? Hire creators. Need relevance? Make clips. Need momentum? Go viral. Need people to get to know the candidate without revealing much of anything? Post something odd and call it authenticity.
Social media is a quick reveal. It reveals whether your message is clear, whether your issues have heat, whether your audience trusts you, and whether people know what to say about you when you are out of frame. It reveals whether you are building a campaign or uploading proof of life.
Social media can accelerate a campaign with a real identity. It can also accelerate the fact that one is missing.
Prince Charming got a phone
Once upon a time, a prince wanted to run for Congress.
He had the bloodline, the followers, the hair, the famous last name, the familiar face, the inherited story, the press curiosity, and the kind of public attention most candidates spend years trying to earn. He arrived with meaning already attached to him. The room knew the family. The press understood the archetype. The donors knew the surname. The audience was supposed to know what he represented before he had to explain himself.
In the old fairy tale, Prince Charming arrives already framed as important. The castle does the work. Everyone understands the premise because the story has already told them how to feel.
Social media works differently. The villagers have phones now. They ask what you have done. They compare receipts. They remix the story. They decide whether you are the prince, the punchline, the policy guy, the chaos candidate, the nepo baby, the underdog, the organizer, the vessel for an issue, or another man who has been told “good idea” in too many rooms.
Jack has the castle, the family, the press, the platform, and the curiosity. He had the advantage most candidates spend years trying to build. What he lacked, at least as reflected in the coverage and the public-facing campaign, was a clear enough case for why voters should choose him.
Vanity Fair described him as someone who had operated “in the public imagination in much the same manner as any online celebrity,” with “outlandish face-to-camera videos,” a self-styled “silly goose” persona, and a willingness to play in the “frenetic attention economy of modern social media.”
A persona can get people to look. A campaign has to make people believe.
Jack got the village to look at the balcony. The race was decided by what voters understood after they looked.
Why these 3: the prince, the AI argument, and the closer
For this analysis, I focused on Jack Schlossberg, Alex Bores, and Micah Lasher because they became the cleanest three-way test inside the NY-12 primary.
Jack had the online audience, Kennedy gravity, creator orbit, and national curiosity. Alex had the clearest issue argument around AI, tech power, labor, and outside money. Micah won the primary and had the feed that looked most like campaign machinery: validators, local electeds, volunteers, poll sites, neighborhood proof, thank-yous, repeat.
This public pull covers X and Instagram activity from January 1, 2026 through June 24, 2026 across candidate pages, official campaign pages, creator posts, press clips, supporter pages, and campaign-adjacent posts. It gives a strong picture of what happened in public.
Ballotpedia’s candidate spending table lists candidate receipts as of June 3, 2026, so treat those fundraising numbers as a late-primary snapshot rather than final post-election finance.
Together, those three candidates raised about $10.19 million in candidate receipts and received 86,246 votes, about 84.9% of the Democratic primary vote. That makes them a useful sample for the piece. They captured the overwhelming majority of votes and the clearest strategic split online.
Reuters described Micah Lasher winning an expensive Democratic primary where a Bloomberg-backed PAC spent over $10 million to help him. The Washington Post framed the race as a star-studded contest that became a proxy war between AI giants. ECIKS reported Jack had 884,000 Instagram followers and 179,500 followers on X, raised $3.9 million by early June including a $1 million personal loan, and that super PACs poured nearly $30 million into the race. The Guardian framed NY-12 as a high-spending AI regulation fight, with tech-aligned money and pro-regulation money active in the race.
The scoreboard: Jack got the eyeballs, Alex got the AI fight, Micah got the votes
Micah Lasher ultimately won the primary. Online, the race looked very different depending on which feed you were watching.
Jack won attention. Alex had the clearest issue argument around AI and Micah had the actual local campaign machinery.
That attention advantage did less campaign work than the headline number suggests. Alex had the strongest CTA discipline, with a combined CTA rate of 33.6%, compared with Micah at 25.8% and Jack at 16.1%.
Jack and Alex were almost tied by opposition rate, with Jack at 38.4% and Alex at 38.3%, while the tone and target were completely different. Alex’s opposition was mostly PACs, AI oligarchs, Trump, megadonors, machines, and tech money.
Jack’s opposition was messier: Alex, Micah, PACs, Israel-related controversy, Fight Agency, tech money, and whatever fight was happening that day.
Jack was attacking the race. Alex was attacking the system. Micah was closing voters.
Creators can bring the crowd. The campaign still has to bring the point.
The creator question belongs here because it is the whole election question in miniature form: attention can open the door, but a campaign still has to give people something useful to carry.
A good creator post gives voters language. It makes an issue easier to understand. It makes a candidate feel safer to talk about. It gives the audience a role: share this, vote here, tell your friend, join this, care about this. The campaign still has to supply the reason.
That is the whole game. Views are attention. Votes require trust, geography, timing, identity, message, and action. Creator power works when it points people toward participation. It gets weird when it turns people into suspects.
Jack posted on June 13 as a collab with a creator. The post framed an issue around Micah Lasher’s comms agency choice, Zionism, Israel, and campaign judgment. It drew 670 engagements and 34,923 views.
This is where the strategy crosses from messy into genuinely dangerous. Fight Agency is a Democratic communications firm. Turning a firm, its staff, and creators in its orbit into targets for antisemitism accusations without clear public evidence does more than create “discourse.” It points an angry internet at real people who work in politics, comms, and creator strategy, many of whom are already dealing with harassment, threats, and doxxing for doing their jobs.
That is how online suspicion becomes offline risk. You can criticize a candidate’s consultants. You can ask for transparency around paid political content. You can disagree with an agency’s client list, ideology, tactics, or judgment. But accusing people of antisemitism in a viral campaign environment is a loaded weapon, and using it loosely makes everyone in the space less safe.
A comms agency is not the race. An agency is not the voter’s rent, healthcare, school, train, public housing, or AI future. Centering them turned a campaign argument into a targeting exercise, and it made the whole conversation uglier, more paranoid, and more dangerous for creators and staffers who should be able to participate in politics without becoming the internet’s next villain of the day.
These posts may have made sense to people tracking every consultant, PAC, creator, agency, and comms fight. For most voters, this was a long way from “here is why I should represent you in Congress.” It made the race feel like homework. Who is Fight? Which candidate are they working for? Which creator is paid? Which account is real? Is this about Bores, Lasher, Israel, antisemitism, bots, dark money, campaign judgment, or all of the above?
That is a lot to ask before a voter gets back to the basic question: why Jack?
The stronger enemy for Jack was sitting right there: cost of living, public housing, tech money, AI power, outside spending, corruption, democratic decline. Those are issues voters already understand. Fight Agency was an insider villain. The post asked voters to learn the campaign’s org chart instead of giving them a cleaner reason to choose him.
Paid political content should be disclosed. Agencies should be clear. Campaigns should follow the rules. Creators should be honest about material relationships. All true. Transparency should build trust. It should make people safer to participate.
The problem is what happens when transparency becomes a weapon. When every creator post becomes a suspicion object, creators get nervous. Voters get quiet. The conversation starts to feel fake, paid, manipulated, or dangerous to touch. In a primary, that hurts the exact people campaigns say they want: younger voters, local voices, creators, volunteers, friends of friends, and normal people with phones who might have posted because they cared. This tactic has a chilling effect on our elections.
A fight with no theory of change is content. A takedown with no organizing path is entertainment. A callout with no solution is branding.
This is why Jack’s creator and agency fights matter. He chose a fight that made the campaign harder to understand and made election participation feel riskier. That is bad strategy. That is bad for turnout. That is bad for Democrats in future races.
Creators are powerful. They can translate issues, validate trust, make politics feel human, and help people move. They can make civic participation feel less lonely. Fairy godmother is a different job. A creator can carry a message. The campaign has to have one.
That is a strategic problem and also a cultural problem for Democrats.
The issues: Alex had AI, Micah had New York, Jack had the fight
Across candidate-owned X and Instagram pages, the race had three centers of gravity. Alex made the race about AI power. Micah made it about NY-12, local trust, and turnout. Jack made it about attention, outside money, Trump, and the internet fight.
This table is a breakdown of candidate-owned and campaign-owned posts only. It does not capture the outside creator economy around the race: meme pages, clipping accounts, paid or unpaid creator posts, PAC-adjacent amplification, press pages, or campaign messaging that moved through accounts the candidates did not own. That outside layer was happening. A creator brief around the Alex Bores AI fight asked creators to push messages about AI child safety, Big Tech moguls, Trump donors, Palantir, OpenAI, and Alex Bores, with the instruction to make it their own and keep it entertainment-first.
So when I say “Alex posted X” or “Jack posted Y,” I mean the candidate-owned layer. The creator and clipping layer is its own machine. This table shows what the campaigns said directly, not everything the internet was being paid, asked, encouraged, or inspired to carry.
Counts below come from caption and tweet text across candidate-owned pages.
Alex made AI the issue. Jack made AI money the attack. Micah made New York the campaign. Jack owned the anti-tech-money vibe through “No PAC Jack.” Micah owned the local frame through NY-12, NYC, validators, poll sites, and neighborhood proof. Jack won attention. Alex and Micah asked for votes.
Social Media Format Breakdown
The format breakdown says almost as much as the captions. Jack used X like a fight board and Instagram like a performance channel. Alex posted like a candidate trying to control his message. Micah posted like a campaign trying to close voters.
Jack had the most Reels and the most quote posts. That tracks with the feed: fast-moving, reactive, personality-heavy, conflict-heavy, built for attention. His Reels helped him dominate visible Instagram response. His quote posts helped turn X into a public fight board.
Alex had the most X originals. That tracks with his campaign: policy, AI, tech money, Trump donors, labor, repeat. He was trying to control the argument. His format was the closest thing to a message memo turned into a feed.
Micah had the most X reposts. That tracks with a validator strategy: local electeds, endorsers, community accounts, volunteers, recognizable figures, poll-site reminders, and thank-yous. His feed had less viral upside and more campaign utility.
So when people say “social media failed,” I need them to be more specific. Which part? Jack’s Reels worked for attention. Alex’s X originals worked for argument. Micah’s reposts worked for validators. The platform was one variable. The strategy was the story.
Just looking at their Instagram grids, you can see the strategy before you read a caption: Alex’s page is graphics, explainers, debate clips, and message discipline; Jack’s page is Jack, his face, his videos, his reactions, his conflict; Micah’s page is community, volunteers, validators, sidewalks, poll sites, and actual New York.
The biggest issues in the race
Across the three campaigns, the biggest issues tell a much better story than the internet fame discourse. Alex made the race about AI power. Micah made the race about New York and local governing. Jack made the race about Trump, tech money, Kennedy identity, outside money, and whatever fight was happening that day.
Micah ran the feed like a NYC field office
Micah’s feed looked the most like a conventional campaign operation. It was endorsements, local validators, press clips, thank-yous, GOTV, issue positioning, neighborhood proof, and reminders to vote.
Micah had the strongest local pattern: 172 NYC-specific posts, 43.1% of his wider public posts, and 59 neighborhood or district-specific posts, (14.8%). He also had 83 vote CTA posts (20.8%). His strongest category was New York itself.
This is the part that has to be in the actual table, because Micah’s issues were not just “housing” or “healthcare.” His issue was the district. His issue was New York. His issue was competence, locality, validators, field, turnout, and familiarity.
Micah was also the least opposition-heavy: 56 opposition posts, a 14.0% opposition rate, compared with Jack at 38.4% and Alex at 38.3%. His strict attack or contrast count was 15 posts, or 3.8%. His feed focused far more on validators, local electeds, volunteers, campaign mechanics, and district history than candidate fights.
On issues, he spread the feed around: 26 housing or affordability posts, 23 education or children posts, 18 ICE or immigration posts, 15 healthcare or vaccine posts, 9 LGBTQ or Pride posts, and 8 climate or environment posts. No single policy issue became a dominant internet identity, but together they made the feed feel like a local official’s campaign.
His strongest Instagram post was the Mandy Patinkin endorsement and GOTV video, which drew 949 engagements and 10,255 views. The ask was simple: get out there and vote.
Another strong validator post was Erik Bottcher at the Chelsea Greenmarket with Micah’s mom, which drew 873 engagements and 7,979 views.
His most opposition-heavy X post came when he quote-tweeted Jack’s impeachment/removal argument after Jack directly called out Micah’s social media manager. That post drew 423 engagements.
Micah’s visible engagement was far lower than Jack’s and below Alex’s, but the mechanics were clearer. His feed kept coming back to the same things: local validators, voting instructions, endorsements, field energy, district legacy, and turnout. It was the least viral strategy, but the most recognizable as a campaign.
Micah needed the feed to help close voters, rather than turn him into the main character.
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The paid section is where I get into the actual strategy: how Alex turned AI into a full campaign argument, how Jack turned AI into a money attack, how Micah used the issue to puncture Alex’s reform image, and why the posts that made the best argument were still fighting against a much heavier story: who explained the future, who yelled about the money, and who kept walking voters to the polls.