AIPAC has chosen a candidate for Illinois’s Seventh Congressional District, the fourth Illinois open-seat House race where the pro-Israel organization is spending money. In this case, AIPAC switched to Chicago city treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, after previously steering donors to businessman Jason Friedman, who leads a crowded field in fundraising.

Conyears-Ervin, who has a history of local corruption scandals, is benefiting from what sources describe as a $2.8 million ad buy from United Democracy Project (UDP), which is AIPAC’s designated super PAC. The ad expenditure will cost approximately $500,000 a week through the duration of the campaign. Other races in Illinois have seen AIPAC use so-called “shell PACs” with neutral-sounding names like Elect Chicago Women or Affordable Chicago Now.

UDP is coming off an embarrassing loss in New Jersey in the race to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill in Congress. UDP ran attack ads against former Rep. Tom Malinowski, who previously received AIPAC support. This threw the election to Analilia Mejia, who has called the war in Gaza a genocide; she maintains an 889-vote lead with just a handful of ballots left to count, and Malinowski, who sits in second place, has conceded. 

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Unlike those attack ads, these UDP spots for Conyears-Ervin are fully positive and biographical in nature. As is customary for the organization, the initial ad makes no mention of Israel or Palestine issues, and instead focuses on lowering costs, protecting health care, and taking on Donald Trump.

Prior to the AIPAC support, Conyears-Ervin was a distant fourth in fundraising among 13 Democrats in the March 17 primary. In an expensive media market like Chicago, it can be difficult to attract attention, raising the temptation of supporting single-issue groups who can throw down millions of dollars in super PAC expenditures.

The Seventh District, which covers part of the South and West Sides of Chicago and its inner-ring suburbs and has a population that is about 43 percent Black, has an open seat after Rep. Danny Davis decided to retire. Davis has tried to hand-pick a successor in state Rep. La Shawn Ford; former Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, SEIU Illinois State Council Executive Director Anthony Driver Jr., emergency physician Thomas Fisher, activist Kina Collins, and former FTC and DOJ staff attorney and anti-monopolist Reed Showalter are also running.

“After failing spectacularly in New Jersey, AIPAC is prepared to drop millions of dollars to buy Illinois’s 7th District,” Showalter said in a statement. “It is shocking, but not surprising, that AIPAC is backing Melissa Conyears-Ervin. AIPAC’s corruption enables genocide; Melissa Conyears-Ervin’s corruption enables her own financial gain. But our district and our democracy are not for sale, and we are more than ready for this fight.”

In a statement to the Prospect, Conyears-Ervin said, “As a Black woman, it’s insulting to constantly fight ridiculous accusations that I would ever do anything else but represent my community to the fullest extent.” She added that she would be undeterred by these accusations. “The issues that are affecting my family and community—Trump’s cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, ICE agents shooting Chicagoans—are too important to fight back against.”

FRIEDMAN, A REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER was the early favorite of AIPAC in the race and has raised the most money by far, nearly three times as much as his nearest challenger and nearly six times more than Conyears-Ervin. More than 35 AIPAC donors gave to Friedman as of last October, bundling about $140,000.

But Conyears-Ervin never gave up fighting for AIPAC funding, and had earned the endorsement of a different pro-Israel group, To Protect Our Heritage PAC. While Friedman, who signed a letter condemning the city of Chicago for supporting a cease-fire in Gaza, has a well-known position on Israel-Palestine policy, the issue hasn’t been a major part of Conyears-Ervin’s political career. Sources suggested to the Prospect that it was attractive for AIPAC to back an ally without drawing as much attention.

A spokesperson for Conyears-Ervin said that the candidate “has supporters in the district that are pro-Israel and some that are not.” She has visited Israel and has “communicated her views clearly to everyone,” the spokesperson added.

Sources in Chicago have told the Prospect that Friedman may even drop out of the race, which is unheard of for a candidate with such a big fundraising lead. There’s an analogue to this, with AIPAC forcing the departure of Bruce Leon from the Ninth District race, where they are supporting state Sen. Laura Fine. Leon explicitly said he was pressured by AIPAC to leave the race.

The Conyears-Ervin spokesperson said that she “would vote to ban unlimited spending in elections as a member of Congress.”

Both Conyears-Ervin and Friedman benefited from an unusual arrangement whereby AIPAC held online fundraisers for them without listing the donor pages. Screenshots of these fundraisers are available below. The fundraisers are only accessible with a direct URL, and most of them have been taken down, though they have been archived. (Here’s a Conyears-Ervin fundraiser, and here’s one for Friedman.)

The donations are not listed as bundled by AIPAC, but as individual contributions given directly to candidates. It allows AIPAC to coordinate donors to their favorites while keeping its name off campaign finance disclosures. As the Prospect has reported, three of its preferred candidates in Illinois have shared hundreds of prior AIPAC donors: Fine in IL-09, Melissa Bean in IL-08, and Donna Miller in IL-02.

The unlisted fundraising websites refer to the “Pro-Israel Network,” and the pages say they were paid for by “Online Fundraising PAC,”  which has only raised $5,000 this election cycle from a single donor, Benjamin Genet, who has previously contributed to AIPAC. AIPAC gave directly to Online Fundraising PAC in 2022 and 2023. The fundraisers do not use ActBlue, the largest fundraising platform for Democratic candidates, but Democracy Engine, which Bloomberg described in 2023 as “offering a workaround” to business and lobbying groups to direct campaign cash. This is technically legal, but it tends to obscure who powerful groups have decided on to carry their message in Congress.

The Conyears-Ervin spokesperson said that the campaign had no role in organizing the online fundraisers, but as a candidate she has “attended online events organized by supporters.”

Fine, in Illinois’s Ninth District, has benefited from more than 20 of these unlisted fundraisers, and hundreds of her donors have previously supported AIPAC. “Laura Fine is desperately trying to hide her financial support from AIPAC and its right-wing backers because she knows how out of step they are with the 9th District,” said a campaign spokesperson for Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who is also running for the seat. “But no matter how hard Laura Fine tries to hide the truth, Democrats will not allow Republicans to buy this seat.”

According to her campaign finance reports, Conyears-Ervin received at least $15,850 from ten prior AIPAC donors, all of them but one coming in the fourth quarter of 2025.

AIPAC Coordinates Donors in Illinois House Primaries

CONYEARS-ERVIN’S BIG-MONEY SUPER PAC SUPPORT comes on the heels of a number of ethics scandals during her political career. While serving as city treasurer in 2024, she was fined $60,000 by the Chicago Board of Ethics and later another $10,000 for violating the Governmental Ethics Ordinance on 12 separate occasions. In one instance, she used her work email, city headshots, and her official title to promote a virtual prayer group, and in another, a city employee was directed to plan her personal appearances at four churches in 2020.

Last year, Conyears-Ervin paid $30,000 to settle the Board of Ethics charges. She “strenuously rejects the claim that her conduct was unethical,” her spokesperson said, calling it a “ridiculous witch hunt.”

In 2021, the city of Chicago settled two lawsuits, paid with $100,000 in taxpayer funds, to employees who were fired by Conyears-Ervin in alleged retaliation for their warning against misusing city resources for her own benefit. The two aides claimed that Conyears-Ervin used staff to plan her child’s birthday party, hired a former cop as an assistant city treasurer whom she used for a personal security detail, and allegedly pressuring a bank used for city deposits to issue a mortgage for a building where her husband Jason, a city alderman, works. Employees at the office, according to the aides, were told that they “should not care if her plans are illegal since the only way they could lose their jobs is if she fires them.”

The whistleblowers, who wrote a letter detailing charges against Conyears-Ervin in 2020 that the city kept hidden for years, are currently under a gag order.

The Chicago Teachers Union endorsed Conyears-Ervin for the congressional race in late January, and recently donated $72,500 to her “committeewoman” election, which is a volunteer Democratic Party position that is held on the same day as the primary election. Similar donations have been given through her husband’s PACs. That money can be used to support the central committee seat, but they raise a candidate’s profile for the more critical congressional seat. Critics see it as an evasion of federal campaign spending limits. Several sitting members of Congress in Illinois are committee members who have also used such funds; the spokesperson for Conyears-Ervin described it as a “very common practice.”

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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud. He co-hosts the podcast Organized Money with Matt Stoller. He can be reached on Signal at ddayen.90.