AIPAC uncorks $100 million war chest to sink progressive candidates
Building on a successful playbook from 2022, AIPAC and other aligned groups are picking their targets — many more of them this time.
By Elena Schneider And Melanie Mason
A California Democrat running for Rep. Katie Porter’s seat suddenly became the target of an unexpected barrage of negative ads from the nation’s premier pro-Israel group this year. So he emailed a former Michigan representative, Andy Levin, for advice.
Levin was ousted from his House seat in 2022, after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spent $4 million against him. Levin was one of a handful of Democrats targeted by AIPAC last cycle, when the group went after a range of progressive candidates in mostly open House primaries over their criticism of Israel.
He told Dave Min, who has not called for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza but has privately criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to reach out to progressive Jewish groups for help. That’s what Levin had done.
But, he acknowledged, “we were simply swamped” by outside spending in his own primary, and Dave Min might face a similar fate.
“Most” candidates won’t be able to survive that spending barrage, Levin said in an interview with POLITICO, and “I’m afraid that they can be quite successful in wiping them out.”
This cycle, they are going even bigger. AIPAC is expected to spend $100 million across its political entities in 2024, taking aim at candidates they deem insufficiently supportive of Israel, according to three people with direct knowledge of the figure, who were granted anonymity to discuss private meetings.
The strategy has taken on new urgency this election season from donors animated by the Israel-Hamas war. AIPAC’s biggest targets are members of the so-called Squad of progressive House Democrats who have been openly pressuring the administration to call for a cease-fire. But AIPAC’s ambitions are broader. United Democracy Project, the group’s super PAC, is monitoring 15 to 20 House races and polling in many of those districts, according to a person directly familiar with UDP’s strategy and granted anonymity to discuss the approach.
“They’ll have so much money, wherever there’s an opportunity, they will take it,” said one Democratic donor adviser who is involved in the effort and was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the organization’s plans.
The fallout from Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack and Israel’s retaliatory bombardment of Gaza, killing more than 30,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza Health Ministry, has led to deep fissures within the Democratic Party — a divide that will play out in House Democratic primaries across the country.
It’s also supercharged fundraising on all sides of the conflict. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the nation’s only federal Palestinian-American lawmaker, raised a staggering $3.7 million in the final three months of 2023, her largest-ever single quarter fundraising haul, around the same time that she was censured by Congress for comments about Israel. United Democracy Project closed out 2023 with nearly $41 million in the bank, a sum that’s nearly double the group’s entire spending program during the 2022 cycle.
Still others are rethinking their primary strategy altogether. J Street, a progressive pro-Israel group that defended candidates against AIPAC in primaries in 2022, won’t reprise that role in 2024, arguing that it’s “generally not a fruitful use of our resources to spend in intra-party feuds,” J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami said. Instead, they’ll focus their $10 million program on only general election campaigns.
J Street’s decision is part of a broader recognition from progressives that they will not be able to “match [AIPAC] dollar-for-dollar,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), a vocal critic of AIPAC.
“Most people are extremely turned off by where that money comes from,” Pocan said. “When you take money from Donald Trump donors, Nikki Haley donors, Ron DeSantis donors and then you put it to use in Democratic primaries, clearly, it’s a disingenuous use of money.”
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A friend told me dual Israeli/US citizenship members of Congress know which country receives overwhelming consideration first....and it ain't the US.
Holding dual citizenship should disqualify any person for CONgress.
America is NOT a democracy! It’s for sale.