SAN FRANCISCO / WASHINGTON — OpenAI is staffing up for a state-by-state AI lobbying fight. Axios reported — and the Washington Examiner amplified on Sept. 7, 2026 — that the ChatGPT maker has added three senior U.S. state-policy hires, including Jessica Schumer, daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), as Congress remains stuck on comprehensive AI legislation.

According to the Axios account cited by multiple outlets, Jessica Schumer will handle OpenAI’s policy and partnership work across the Northeast. She previously served as chief of staff at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, worked on Sen. Tim Kaine’s policy shop during Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, and most recently ran Amazon’s public-policy operations in New York. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the hire to Axios, per the Examiner.

Also joining: Caulder Harvill-Childs, a Republican-aligned Meta public-policy veteran and former adviser to Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, to lead Southeast state work; and Thomas MacLellan, a cybersecurity policy specialist with stints at Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, FireEye, and the National Governors Association, focused on state cyber defense policy.

The hires fit what OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane calls “reverse federalism”: rather than waiting for a single federal AI statute, push similar frontier-safety rules through large states — California, New York, and Illinois among them — so those templates become a de facto national standard. OpenAI has publicly endorsed that approach on its Global Affairs channel, arguing harmonized state baselines beat a 50-state patchwork or endless Capitol Hill deadlock.

That strategy is classic concentrated-power politics dressed as safety work. Statehouses become the venue where a frontier lab with lobbyists can shape the rules its competitors must live under, while startups without D.C. or Albany shops eat the compliance cost — and while voters still argue about data-center power bills and midterm AI messaging. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has separately urged the industry to sell the public on AI’s benefits amid backlash to data-center buildouts; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has introduced a bill aiming to ban “artificial superintelligence” development outright.

Hiring the Senate minority leader’s daughter for Northeast outreach does not prove a quid pro quo. It does underline how AI policy is being written: through revolving-door résumés, state-capitol campaigns, and corporate “safety” frameworks that travel faster than elected national standards.

Sources